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SPUNK 

(How to Lick Fear) 


By 

DAVID v/bUSH 


Author 

Character Analysis—How to Read People at Sight 
Practical Psychology and Sex Life 
Applied Psychology and Scientific Living 
The Universality of the Master Mind 
Psychology of Success 

Psychology of Sex—How to Maf{e Love and Marry 


Copyright 1924 

DAVID V. BUSH, 

Mehoopany, Pa. 


Copyright, 1924 
DAVID V. BUSH 




CONTENTS 


PAGE NO. 

I How Well Can You Take Defeat?. 5 

II Spunk. 15 

III Get the Prosperity Habit. 19 

IV Have You Been Sidetracked?. 26 

V Take It Like a Soldier.34 

VI Each Cloud Has a Silver Lining.37 

VII Why an Eagle's on the Dollar.44 

VIII What Are Your Needs?.46 

IX Do You Believe in Signs?.49 

X Patience Shot to Pieces.51 

XI The Bathtub and You.56 

XII How Are You?.63 

XIII Why and When Is a Man Old?.65 

XIV Think Pleasant.76 

XV It's Better to Smile.79 

XVI One Thousand Dollars a Week for Laughing. . 82 

XVII Old and Yet New. 84 

XVIII Give and Get.85 

XIX Psychology in Everything, Especially You... 88 

XX The Unusual Man.92 

XXI Keep Everlastingly at It—It Pays.96 

XXII Where Does Abundance Come From?.98 

XXIII Which Way Do You Think?.100 

XXIV How to Nail “Fear" on the Head.101 

XXV How to Lick Fear.106 

XXVI Other Tested Methods.114 

XXVII Devils Are Where We Find Them.123 

XXVIII Fear Can Hold Us Back.131 

XXIX Battles Are Won or Lost in Our Minds.... 139 

XXX Fear Blocks Our Progress.146 

XXXI What We Can Do When We Lick Fear.151 

XXXII The Dread Curse of Fear.154 



































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Chapter I 


HOW WELL CAN YOU TAKE DEFEAT? 



iHERE is nothing but eternal victory for 


the man who can take defeat with a smih 


ing grace and with a poised confidence 
in his ultimate triumph. 

Defe^isjjnly another way of reaching one’s 
goal, and as a rule, the more defeats a man has 
the greater will be his power in the end. 

‘‘All the world’s a stage” and we are merely 
players. All life is a school room where we 
learn our daily lessons, and the more pricks we 
get in life’s lessons the more punch we shall have 
for accomplishing ultimate success. 

We learn to swim by trying. Our efforts 
seem at first to be in vain. We sink, we struggle, 
we come to the top and squirt water from our 
choking throat, we catch our breath quickly and 
try desperately to find a foothold which will 
enable us to keep our head above water. We did 
not succeed in swimming the first time we made 
the effort, but the fellow who tries the second 
time and the third time, the one whtJ goes under 
but comes up again for the fourth and the fifth 


5 



6 


SPUNK 


time, who struggles the sixth and the seventh 
time, the one who gives an extra kick the eighth 
and the ninth time, who does not feel his feet 
on solid bottom with his head above water, with 
the spirit to try it again for the tenth and the 
eleventh time and who sinks and comes up the 
twelfth and thirteenth time—the one who finally 
gets in a stroke here and there, who gives a kick 
to keep his head above water the fourteenth and 
the fifteenth time, although he goes under and 
under and comes up and up and goes down and 
down and down and strangles and strangles and 
paddles and paddles and kicks and kicks, is the 
man who finally learns to swim! 

Defeated in his first effort, he is successful in 
the end. Driven almost to desperation in his 
vain endeavor to keep his head above water, but 
determined not to let one defeat or two defeats 
or three defeats or a do2;en defeats keep him 
from learning how to swim, he, in time, becomes 
a strong and experienced swimmer. 

The greatest of the sons of men were not 
successful in their first undertakings. Some of 
the foremost men in all history have met nothing 
but defeat piled upon defeat, disaster following 
upon the heels of previous disaster, failure dog¬ 
ging their footsteps for thirty, forty, fifty and 
sixty years, but in the end, triumph! That is 
the way of life—that is the way to success. 


HOW WELL CAN YOU TAKE DEFEAT? 7 


Few men reach their goal without some sink^ 
ing, strangling, choking, kicking and awkward 
paddling; and if perchance they do establish 
their first stride of success without the prelimi^ 
nary stride of the amateur learning to swim, they 
usually become so inffated with their achieve¬ 
ment that they never go far. They rest on their 
laurels and miss the higher success which might 
have been theirs had they first been defeated a 
few times. 

It is a good thing for a man to meet defeat— 
aye, for most men it it the best thing that can 
happen to them, and the man who can smile in 
his defeat and glory in his failure and exult in 
his loss, yet still keep the determination to try 
again, is not only made of the stuff that kings 
are made of, but is made of the stuff that success¬ 
ful men are made of, and is bound to conquer 
in the end. 

The old adage that you cannot keep a good 
man down applies to the man who has met defeat. 
It does not matter how many times the real 
success-to-be meets with defeat—those defeats 
are needed lessons to make him a greater success 
in the end. 

Call the roll of the truly great and see if their 
early defeats were not really the stepping-stones 
to their final success. We are pretty safe in 
saying that the more defeats a man has, the more 


8 


SPUNK 


punches he gets from the hand of fate, the more 
black eyes environment gives him, and the more 
rebuffs circumstance hands out, the greater will 
be his success in the end—if he never gives up. 

“Aye, there’s the rub!” The difference be¬ 
tween success and failure is so small that no one 
can tell exactly where one ends or the other 
begins. Just where one man gives up because 
fate has dealt him an uppercut, the other man, 
who has had as many defeats and as many cuts 
below the belt, and who may perhaps have less 
genius into the bargain, goes on to his ultimate 
achievement because he comes back and tries 
again. He never, never surrenders! 

There is no ultimate defeat for the man who 
never says die. The crown of achievement is 
placed upon the brow of the persistent man no 
matter how many times he may have been de¬ 
feated. Why? Because he will not give up. The 
laurel wreath is not placed upon the brow of the 
timid or the fearful, nor is the race won by one 
who quits when a single defeat is scored against 
him. Achievement is handed on a silver platter 
to the man who will never say die! 

How many defeats have you had—how many 
can you take—how long can you stand it? Can 
you come back with your old time “pep” 
when fate has given you an uppercut that split 
your jaw? That is the question! The answer 


HOW WELL CAN YOU TAKE DEFEAT? 


9 


spells either ultimate success or permanent fail¬ 
ure. There can be no failure in the end for the 
man who never says die. Victory, achievement, 
power, success and triumph await the man who 
tries again. 

Nearly every big financier of America has at 
some time in his life been a failure. The differ¬ 
ence between these great men and many mediocre 
fairly successful gentlemen is simply the spirit 
of coming back and trying again. 

In the bright lexicon of American manhood, 
which fate has reserved for the courageous, there 
is no such word as ‘"defeat.” Or, if there is 
such a word, it signifies merely a stepping-stone 
to greater victory. 

How well can you take defeat? How often 
can you come back? How many times can you 
rebound from the knockdowns of life to the up¬ 
right, victorious attitude of achievement? As 
long as you can bound back defeat will be only 
your best friend. The need of the hour is that 
each defeated person will take stock of himself, 
search his own soul, and from present defeat find 
a way of bringing about a greater success than he 
could have had if undefeated. Defeat is the 
lever by which a man can lift himself by his own 
bootstraps. Defeat can spell victory and tri¬ 
umph, and each visitation can be made to mean 
greater success in the end. 


10 


SPUNK 


From the time he stretched his gaunt body 
before the fireplace in the log cabin to see to 
figure his lessons on the back of a shingle, until 
his final great success, Abraham Lincoln knew 
little but failure. The m-ore disappointments he 
had, the more setbacks that were his, the more 
defeats scored against him, the more reserve 
power he accumulated. Each failure was to him 
a lever, which by determination he used to raise 
himself to the topmost pinnacle among men. He 
had but slight success before his crowning one, 
than which there could have been nothing 
greater. 

George Washington scarcely won a real battle 
until he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at 
Yorktown, but that victory was a corker! It 
represented, even more emphatically than the 
battle of Concord, the “shot heard round the 
world”—it was a declaration of the freedom of 
man which will be heard throughout all genera- 
tions to come. 

Bull Run was a most disastrous affair for the 
Union forces in the early days of ’61, but that 
very defeat was the spark necessary to fire the 
ranks of the Federal army, and to steel the spirit 
of the North. So, although it took four years 
to turn this first defeat into ultimate victory, 
the turn came; and when it did come, it came 
with such a bang and such a smash that the flag 


HOW WELL CAN YOU TAKE DEFEAT? 11 


of the world’s freedom for every race of man was 
unfurled, never again to be lowered even to 
half mast. The defeat at Bull Run meant vic^ 
tory at Appomatox Court House. 

The immortal General Grant who that day 
accepted with supreme dignity the sword of the 
South’s surrendered forces never knew that that 
by'gone defeat in his personal experiences was 
to steel his ranks and inspire them to the ultimate 
victory ahead. 

General Grant never knew defeat. He did not 
recogni 2 ie it; he could not spell it when it came 
either into his own life or into the life of his 
cause. General Grant was far from a success 
until his final great achievement. His boyhood, 
schooldays and early manhood, as well as his 
years of full maturity, smacked of everything but 
success. Apparently defeated at every turn, he 
seemed veritably marked by Mother Nature for 
a final spanking. Circumstance seemed to en¬ 
tangle him in its deadly meshes; conditions and 
environment all appeared to vie one with the 
other to crush his spirit, break his back, and kill 
the last spark of manhood within him; but 
Grant in his personal and civic life knew no such 
thing as defeat. He was a man of victory. He 
maintained a victorious attitude, and that which 
he maintained was finally his. Anyone who can 
keep the spirit of victory in the dark, gloomy 


12 


SPUNK 


days of defeat is bound to have ultimate triumph 
and success. 

How well can you take defeat? 

Can you take it like a Washington, like a Lin¬ 
coln, like a Grant—can you take it like a man, 
like a son of the eternal God? If you can, victory 
is bound to be yours! 

Everybody seems to chew ‘"Wrigley” these 
days. “Spearmint," “Wrigley," “bobbed hair," 
chewing gum, all tied up in one. Is there an 
American son of an American, or a son of an 
adopted American, who does not know Wrigley 
and Spearmint? 

Wrigley, multimillionaire, making his way 
from the ranks of the dollarless to the heights of 
the richest, where his name is on every tongue, 
had plenty of defeat; but each defeat was only 
a lesson indicating to him the way to greater 
success in the end. 

Wrigley came to New York City twice to sell 
gum and went broke twice. After his second 
failure it is reported that he said, “I am coming 
back to New York and when I do. New York 
will know I am here!" He went back. It is 
said that he spent a million dollars his first time 
in New York, but he did not make a dent. New 
York chewed him all right, but not in the way 
the public is chewing him now. New York 
chewed up his money, chewed up his advertising. 


HOW WELL CAN YOU TAKE DEFEAT? 13 


and then swallowed him whole. Wrigley came 
back again. He left New York temporarily de- 
feated, but with a victorious attitude; with the 
spirit of the conqueror. He made another million, 
and then another. His fame spread, his gum was 
chewed and chewed and chewed all over—even 
New York was now chewing Wrigley’s gum, 
but not as much as it should. So Wrigley came 
back again to the scene of his two defeats, back 
to his chewing gum “Bull Run,’’ back to the 
battlefield which had been soaked with the sweat 
of his brow and the blood of his heart, back to 
the place where he never could have been worse 
off. How did he come back? With the spirit 
of victory; with the manner of the conqueror! 
Back with the old fire and the old faith in himself, 
for the third time Wrigley invaded New York! 
For the third time his chewing gum howit 2 ;ers, 
his Spearmint gatling guns and his “P. K.” 
armored tanks were concentrated on the bill 
boards and the newspapers and maga2;ines of the 
metropolis; and behold—Wrigley won back the 
two fortunes he had lost in Greater New York 
City! 

How can you take defeat? Aye, that is the 
question. To be defeated or not defeated must 
at some time be answered by every living son of 
Adam. Your future depends entirely upon how 
you answer it. To be defeated and then “suffer 


14 


SPUNK 


the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” 
with the shreds of failure slipping from your 
hands, but facing the world with the spirit of 
victory and achievement, means that your defeat 
will be turned to victory in the end. 

How can you take your defeat? That is the 
question. Answer it in the affimative and you 
have won so solidly that nothing this side of 
eternity can keep you from ultimatey running 
up your flag of victory on the heights of eternal 
achievement! 

How well can you take defeat? 


Chapter II 


SPUNK 


W HAT is the difference between the 
man who ultimately succeeds and 
the man who fails? Spunk! 

What if you have been slapped around by fate, 
cuffed by circumstance, jostled by heredity? 
Spunk doesn’t give a rap how many raps you’ve 
had! Spunk thrives on raps and jostling and 
knocks and cuffing and rebuffs. Spunk only 
smiles in the face of defeat. When hit the hard¬ 
est, spunk smiles the broadest. 

Get spunk! 

John L. Sullivan, who for twenty-five years 
was king of the pugilistic world, claimed that 
he never felt a blow from his opponent in the 
ring. He was so absolutely immersed in the job 
at hand, and had learned so thoroughly to con¬ 
centrate toward the one objective of battering 
down his opponent, that he did not feel his 
opponent’s blows no matter how violently they 
were delivered. That is spunk. 

The fellow with spunk does not care how 
many times he has to battle, for battling only 


15 


16 


SPUNK 


develops more spunk. The more he battles the 
more spunk he gets, and that is another way to 
win—the only way. 

Solomon in his proverbs instructs us: ‘"With 
all thy getting, get understanding.” We would 
humbly add, in this modern day of materialistic 
scrambling after moneybags, influence and power, 
that in all your getting you had better get spunk, 
and plenty of it. The more you get the better 
for you and the better for spunk! 

I know a man who in his career has had as 
many cuffs and rebuffs as a do 2 ;en men could 
stand, yet who has received signal success in his 
line of work. The harder this man was cuffed 
and rebuffed, the clearer he kept his head, the 
harder he worked, and the more confidence he 
had in his ultimate achievement. That is spunk. 

Anybody can be cuffed and beaten. Anybody 
can be rebuffed and give up. Anybody can be 
battered and scarred, but the thing that saves is 
spunk—and anybody can have spunk, too, if he 
will! The idea which you entertain in your 
mind is the thing that counts. If your idea is 
that of spunk, spunk is what you will have. If 
your idea is to bow to the “inevitable,” you are 
going to bow; and as you bow someone will 
kick you from behind and knock you over. The 
idea is the thing that counts. Get the idea of 
spunk, and the more vivid you make it, the more 


SPUNK 


17 


spunky you will become. Think spunk, and you 
will be spunky! 

A rat is one of the most cowardly of all 
creatures. If he has a chance of running away 
he will take it. But when cornered, and utterly 
without an avenue of escape, he develops into a 
veritable fury and fights like a wildcat. We 
should not recommend anyone to be a rat, but 
we recommend anyone when cornered to have 
the spunk of a rat. Perhaps all you need to dis- 
cover you have spunk is to be cornered. Maybe 
the loom of life is now weaving a web to corner 
you, and maybe that is the very thing you need. 
Maybe you are cornered now, so that all you 
need is the inspiration of a temporary setback 
to make you strike out and batter down the cir¬ 
cumstances which have cornered you and seem 
to have beaten you. 

Man is only clay in the hands of the potter, 
so the good Book tells us; but now we under¬ 
stand that we are the potter, and that the power 
within us is the God-power to mold our own 
pattern and achieve our own success. We are 
clay, but we are God-inspired clay. Clay, but 
the clay that gods are made of. The omnipotent 
power is resident within each individual, and by 
our own thinking we determine and fashion our¬ 
selves. Inoculate your life-clay with some of the 
spirit of spunk, and, lo and behold!—the potter 


18 


SPUNK 


of life, your own power within, will mold into 
full perfection the thing your inmost spirit cries 
to be! Inculcate into your life’s clay the spirit 
of spunk, and spunk you will have. 

The world gives way to the man with spunk. 
Have spunk, and the world is yours I Fate itself, 
the seemingly inevitable, is overcome by the man 
of spunk. Have spunk, and the inevitable will 
for you be success, prosperity and achievement! 


Chapter III 


GET THE PROSPERITY HABIT 

M any people do not have abundance 
and prosperity and are not successful 
because they have not cultivated the 
prosperous, abundant, successful attitude. 

Get the prosperity habit of thought. 

It is impossible for a man to attract abundance 
to him, have prosperity and worthwhile success 
if his whole mental attitude is not tuned to that 
key. It is like fishing without bait—it is like 
going to a Fourth of July picnic expecting to have 
a lot of good things to eat and taking nothing 
with you. You might get a fish, if the fish is 
blind, or you might get something to eat at the 
picnic if, perchance, someone takes pity on you, 
but that is about the only thing that will happen. 
So, in the world of prosperity, we might become 
fairly prosperous, but it will be one chance in a 
million unless we have the prosperous frame of 
mind—the bait, by which we “catch” success. 

We get in this life only that which we are 
going to get. We may go fishing all day in the 
boiling sun, blister our hands, wear out the seat 


19 


20 


SPUNK 


of our pants, come home with an empty line, 
empty stomach and empty basket, but if we did 
not take with us the right kind of bait to attract 
the fish to our inviting hook, we cannot blame 
the fish, the time or the place. The fault is ours, 
simply because we did not conform to the rules 
of the fishing game—knowing that the fish have 
appetites and do not bite on bare hooks or hooks 
improperly baited. 

So a man may fish a lifetime for prosperity, 
success and abundance, but without the bait of 
the right mental attitude never win success, 
prosperity and abundance, achieving only the 
customary "‘fisherman’s luck.” 

The fact is that if a man is to be prosperous, 
he must think in terms of prosperity. 

The law of Karma is ever true—what we sow 
we reap, and if a man sows poverty, the unsuc¬ 
cessful seed-lack-of-abundance “bait,” he will get 
that which he sows. To have prosperity you 
must sow the seed thoughts of prosperity. Get 
the prosperity habit of thinking. Think that you 
can have prosperity, believe that you are going 
to have prosperity, know that prosperity is yours, 
claim it now, have the victorious attitude of the 
successful man today, and the bait that you are 
using, the seed you are sowing, will attract to 
you the things you want. 

We would think a man was cra2;y if, on the 


GET THE PROSPERITY HABIT 


21 


Fourth of July, in the boiling sun, setting out 
to see how far his corn had grown, he went into 
a garden patch of Russian thistles, into a patch 
where he had not sowed corn. We get what we 
sow. If we sow corn, we get it. If we sow wheat, 
wheat is what we harvest. If we sow Russian 
thistles, Russian thistles are what willl spring up. 
We get the thing we expect to get; therefore, 
create, maintain and hold the prosperity habit 
of thinking. 

How many, many people expect to have pros- 
perity and then go to work with a face downcast, 
a spirit that is broken and a mental attitude of 
defeat! Everyone in the office, from the errand 
boy to the boss himself, will catch the defeat 
vibrations of the down-cast individual and no one 
will have confidence in him, not even the floors 
sweeper. Instead of blaming circumstances, con¬ 
ditions, environment and fate because we are 
not successful, let us throw the searchlight of 
fairness into our own souls and see what is our 
mental attitude. Do you really believe in pros¬ 
perity? Are you looking for it, do you expect it 
to come, are you confident it is yours? If you 
are, then one of these days you will garner a big 
barnful of the things you expect to get—pros¬ 
perity, abundance, success. 

A man may be the greatest genius God ever 
let breathe, but if he has not enough confidence 


22 


SPUNK 


in himself, enough spunk to strike out for himself, 
enough grit and gumption to see he is a spark of 
the divine, the chances are the world will never 
know he is alive. 

Get the prosperity habit! 

There is no difference between you and the 
successful man unless your thinking makes it so. 
Every great and successful human being who 
has trod the globe has believed in his own power 
of achievement. You have the same birthright 
as the rest of the sons of'God—claim your birth¬ 
right now, create the habit of prosperous 
thinking. 

“"Thoughts are things,” said Shakespeare, and 
Shakespeare understood. Whatever you achieve, 
you literally achieve by thinking. 

The shuttle which weaves the fabric of life’s 
success on the loom of achievement is the victo¬ 
rious mental attitude. If you would be prosperous, 
if you would be successful, if you would have 
abundance, think abundance. The same energy 
spent in worrying about our debts, grieving over 
our poverty, railing against fate and condemning 
our situation, if spent in the right mental atti¬ 
tude of prosperity, success and abundance, would 
bring to us the things which we want instead of 
keeping us chained to the thoughts we loathe 
and against which our souls rebel. 

We cannot think poverty and have abun- 


GET THE PROSPERITY HABIT 


23 


dance. We cannot think failure and have success. 
We cannot think limitation and have prosperity. 
For that which we think, we have. We become 
like that which we think. 

If a man is going out into the world for game, 
he has to go prepared to get it. 

The man hunting big game—elk, moose and 
bear—does not go on his expedition with a pop¬ 
gun over his shoulder. He goes prepared to get 
the thing which he wants, equipped with rifle 
and shells. So in the game of life. To get that 
which we want we must first be prepared in 
mind that we are going to get it. Throw away 
your ‘"pop-gun” of failure, lack, limitation and 
fate, and put in its place steel jacketed shells 
and big calibre rifle, with the hammer all cocked 
and ready to be pulled by the finger of success 
and “Bang!” down will come your big game of 
achievement. To get the thing you want, be 
prepared. To have prosperity, expect you are 
going to get it. 

What would you think of a man who starts 
out from San Francisco to go to Liverpool and 
buys a railroad ticket only to New York City, 
expecting to board a boat and get across the 
great, wide, deep Atlantic without a steamship 
ticket or the equivalent thereof? You would think 
he was cra2;y, foolish or mad. To go to his destina" 
tion he must have the wherewithal to get there. 


24 


SPUNK 


Wise is the man who either buys his ticket clear 
through to his destination, or makes other provi¬ 
sion for the same. 

The man who starts out upon the road of life 
without a through ticket of right thinking may 
travel half-way across the continent of experience, 
reach his New York of living, but never cross 
the deeps of life’s great success because he has 
made no provision for the latter part of the 
journey—the provision of right thinking. 

If you are going to travel the successful road 
to the top you must be equipped in mind so that 
you will ultimately reach your goal. That mental 
equipment is, first of all, belief that you are going 
to get there. Get the prosperity habit of 
thinking. 

When the airfleet, expecting to circle the 
globe, left Seattle, it was equipped with all sorts 
of mechanical contrivances designed to meet every 
emergency so that when an engine went bad in 
the American ship of the air, Yankee ingenuity 
had already anticipated just such an emergency 
and at once connected up another engine in its 
pace. The trip was not given up because of 
deficiencies in mechanism. 

So in life, when a man starts a round-the-world 
flight of success, if he be wise, he will equip his 
mental mechanism with the right kind of energy 
appliances. If when he hops from a continent to 


GET THE PROSPERITY HABIT 


25 


an island he strikes a dead air chamber, and the 
flight seems to be ruined by the danger reefs 
ahead, the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the 
pilot do not fail him—he is ready for any emer- 
gency. So in your air flight of life, be ready for 
anything that comes—your readiness depends 
upon your mental attitude. 

There is no defeat for the man who does not 
believe in defeat. There is no failure for the 
man who does not accept failure and will not 
bow to the mandate of the “inevitable.” Your 
mental equipment depends upon vision, fore- 
sight, courage, faith and victory. If you expect 
to make a prosperous flight of the world, add to 
this mental equipment the attitude of prosperity, 
and prosperity you will have. You may have to 
detour, you may have to back up, you may fly 
ahead and get balked by tricky wind currents, 
but that is not anything; it is only another way 
of having fun while en route to your ultimate 
goal—prosperity. 

To have prosperity, expect it. To have pros¬ 
perity know that you are going to get it. To 
have prosperity take every jolt, misfortune, hand¬ 
icap, hindrance and accident as a training school 
for a greater and more precious prosperity-loving- 
cup in the end. 

To be prosperous, think prosperity—that is, 
get the prosperity habit of thinking. 


Chapter IV 


HAVE you BEEN SIDETRACKED? 


ERY few of the world’s great men have 



come into their own before fifty years 


^ of age. Most all of the ''Sons of Achieve¬ 
ment” have been sidetracked some time or other. 
Rare are the sons of men who bla 2 ;e forth in 
meteoric fashion while young. True, some have 
enjoyed this experience but they are few in num¬ 
ber. As a rule the one who has had his great 
success while in his twenties or early thirties 
is the one who peters out at the age of sixty. 
Not everyone can stand success. 

The one who makes the greatest headway 
while he is young is inclined to rest upon his 
oars. At the age of forty-five or fifty, when he 
ought to be pulling the strongest, he has got into 
the habit of drifting, thinking backwards to his 
early success, resting upon his laurels, instead of 
looking forward and pulling upstream to a new 
and greater goal. 

Blessed is the man who has been sidetracked a 
time or two. 


26 


HAVE YOU BEEN SIDETRACKED? 


27 


Every experience of life is good and the 
bitter ones best of all. 

Sidetracking is a mighty good thing for most 
men who are ambitious to render the greatest 
amount of service and put in their best licks for 
success and prosperity. 

How patient can you be when you are side¬ 
tracked? Can you plug as hard on the side track 
as on the main line? Can you work with energy, 
vim and vigor free from bitterness when the 
switchman of experience has run you onto the 
sidetrack of life? 

Can you dig in your toes and grit your teeth 
and clinch your fists and pound away as hard 
on the sidetrack as though you were flying 
smoothly ahead on the main line aboard the 
Twentieth Century Limited? The answer to 
this spells ultimate success or failure. 

The man who is sidetracked and still fights 
bravely on, taking conditions as they are and 
wringing from circumstances a still greater desire 
to achieve, is the man who, in the end, will profit 
by the sidetracking experience and thank God 
that he had it. 

Every experience is for your good and the 
sidetracking best of all. 

On the side track you will be having new 
experiences, you will be learning more and better 
lessons of life, you will be storing away in the 


28 


SPUNK 


temple of life, knowledge, information and experi¬ 
ence which will be invaluable in the years to 
come. Then the switchman of your good for¬ 
tune, inspired by your varied experiences, will 
throw the switch again, shooting you onto the 
main line with a velocity and a momentum which 
will carry you further on the track of achieve¬ 
ment than could have been possible had you 
not been on one of life’s sidings. 

Do not grumble while sidetracked. Do not 
rail against fate while marking time on the 
siding. In such a negative state, you spend 
enough energy to shoot you from where you 
are to where you want to be, if spent in the 
opposite thought, in positive belief in yourself 
and your ultimate success, backed up by energetic 
effort and study. Thought is energy. Thought 
is power. Thought is achievement! 

While on the siding do not think of conditions 
as they are, but think of conditions as you want 
them to be. While sidetracked spend your 
energy planning for the future, thinking of the 
goal ahead, believing in your ultimate victory 
and that energy will in time change the siding 
into the main line. 

While on the sidetrack of life smile, be op¬ 
timistic, look up and not down, be cheerful and 
courageous, remembering that every experience 


HAVE YOU BEEN SIDETRACKED? 


29 


of your life is for your good, and the sidetracking 
best of all. 

Very often the experience of life which seems 
to be the crushing blow is the very thing needed 
to send us the farthest up—aye, every disastrous 
shock, every crushing blow, every defeated pur^ 
pose, every sidetracked experience, comes into 
a man’s life for the very purpose of getting him 
ready to do something bigger than he could have 
done without the disappointment, provided he 
spends his energy in constructive, optimistic, 
courageous thinking. 

Russel H. Conwell was reputed the greatest 
preacher of his day. Charles H. Dana, of the 
New York Sun, called him one of the three 
greatest men of his generation. Conwell was 
sidetracked for years. 

Conwell felt the urge and the “cair’ to preach, 
but was sidetracked. He was a newspaper re^ 
porter, an editor, a traveller, a real estate agent— 
sidetracked from his main purpose. At the age of 
thirty-eight when he decided to give up the 
things which had held him down, that had 
prevented him from beginning a professional 
career, and accepted a call to the little Grace 
Baptist Church in Philadelphia, his friends and 
family were so disappointed that when he 
departed to accept his pastorate in Philadelphia 
they would not even go to the station to bid 


30 


SPUNK 


him goodbye. He was told, '‘’You are too old 
to begin a professional career and be successful; 
you have crossed the ‘deadline.’ Taking up a 
new and difficult vocation without special train- 
ing, with the little pay and slight chances for 
advancement at your age, is dead wrong”—so 
his relatives thought. 

Do not pay too much attention to what your 
relatives think. 

Sidetracked was Conwell, but his experiences 
in life, in globe-trotting, in business, in meeting 
men and rubbing up against the experiences of 
existence were the very things needed to make 
him one of the greatest men of his day. Without 
having been sidetracked, Conwell might have 
died unknown, unhonored and unsung. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was, in his day, one 
of the most sought after lyceum attractions in 
America. Emerson not only became famous but 
very rich. Emerson’s greatness depended upon 
the fact that he had been sidetracked. Emerson 
was a regularly ordained “Minister of the Gos¬ 
pel,” but he disagreed with the orthodoxy of 
his day and told the world a few of his opinions. 
Bang! his clerical head was cut off by the ecclesias¬ 
tical guillotine. He was excommunicated, kicked 
out of the church, his ministerial papers taken 
from him; he was ostraci2ied by his “brethren,” 
branded as an outlaw, run onto the sidetrack 


HAVE YOU BEEN SIDETRACKED? 


31 


of life with all of the speed that ecclesiastical 
machinery could develop. 

Emerson sidetracked, made Emerson rich and 
famous. 

Maybe the very thing that sidetracked you 
was the particular thing you needed to bring 
out the mettle which is in you, to steel your 
latent powers to greater achievement. Side¬ 
tracked! It is a mighty good thing for anyone. 

Charles M. Fillmore, head of an institution 
that prints over a million books, maga2;ines and 
pamphlets a month, whose great teachings girdle 
the globe, in middle life was sidetracked. 

He had engaged in the real estate business, 
and successfully, as far as his particular work 
was concerned, but he felt a call to render 
service to mankind in a different way from selling 
skyscrapers and real estate. So he began talking 
to individuals and started a little ‘‘'“sheet” telling 
what he believed the mind could accomplish. 
He first got out, himself, his little messengers of 
printed ink and paper. Sidetracked to a home¬ 
made, unrecogni 2 ;ed paper. Sidetracked for years, 
but he kept on just the same. His message 
spread, his paper grew, disciples began to assimi¬ 
late his ideas, and today in Kansas City, Mo., his 
great plant covers a whole city block. His edi¬ 
torial staff, his great corps of hundreds of workers. 


32 


SPUNK 


and his great rotary presses turning out a million 
copies a month! Sidetracked. 

It was on the sidetrack that Fillmore got 
his best experience, put in his best licks for the 
great success he has achieved. 

Blessed is the man who has been sidetracked, 
and if sensible as well as successful he thanks 
God for the siding. 

I have a multimillionaire friend in St. Louis 
who came to the city a poor man, and with the 
savings of a lifetime, representing but a few 
hundred dollars, invested it in what appeared 
to be at the time a wilho’-the^wisp. When the 
thing seemed to have gone to smash and all of 
his earnings lost, himself out of a position, his 
friends laughing at him for being a fool, he went 
on the sidetrack cooly, deliberately, optimistically 
and courageously. He never swerved from his 
ultimate goal. What money he had he had stuck 
in the venture and he would stay by the ship 
even though that ship were sinking. With a 
spirit undaunted and with the faith of an Abra- 
ham, he stayed on the sidetrack, keeping his 
face turned toward the main line. Failure was 
the thing he needed. He stayed by the guns. 
He had lost his money and his position. Side" 
tracked, but on the siding he made his own job. 
The one man on the deserted ship, he stayed by 
the thing that had fi2;2;led. Little by little the 


HAVE YOU BEEN SIDETRACKED? 


33 


ship began to float, the wreckage was saved, 
the salvage cashed in, and today he is head of 
one of the biggest concerns of its kind on the 
continent, a multimillionaire! He made his 
millions by being sidetracked, and taking it 
gracefully like a man, courageously like a victor, 
triumphantly like a king. 

It does not matter whether you are sidetracked 
or not—it matters only how you act on the 
siding. Spend your thought, your energy, your 
time and your efforts with head uplifted, with 
shoulders thrown back, with eyes keenly set 
upon the goal, and as surely as you are side¬ 
tracked, so surely will you in time hit the main 
line and pull in at the terminal of a greater 
success. 

Thank God for being on the siding! 


Chapter V 


TAKE IT LIKE A SOLDIER 


HAT kind of a punch can you take 



from the world’s mailed fist? A side 


^ ^ winder? That is all right, take it like 
a soldier! 

If there is anything the world likes and 
admires it is a man who has spunk, and if there 
is anything that makes an individual feel like a 
man it is the feeling that he has grit, gumption 
and spunk. If there is anything that will make 
a man who is ready to surrender feel like going 
on until he accomplishes the thing he has set 
out to do, it is spunk,—taking things like a soldier. 

Have you had a full swat in the face by 
circumstances until you are staggered? (That is 
dandy, take it like a soldier.) 

Staggers are good for a fellow—after it is 
over. He can appreciate straight walking a 
little better. 

Nothing can eternally go wrong with the 
man who takes it like a soldier—things are 
bound to turn for him tomorrow. Nothing 
can be so bad that it can make such an one 


34 


TAKE IT LIKE A SOLDIER 


35 


cringe. He may hesitate, he may stagger, he 
may catch his breath, but you cannot stop him; 
you cannot break his back. He may slow up; 
he may back water; he may reconnoitre; he 
may seek shelter for a time, but it is only 
temporary; he is getting ready for a better 
sprint, for a greater fight and for a more glorious 
victory. 

Whatever comes, take it like a soldier. Swallow 
your pride if you have to. Grit your teeth if you 
must, take the contumely of your neighbors if 
necessary, but smile withal and take it like a 
soldier. 

In time you will see your pride was false, 
your teeth will become strong by exercise and 
your neighbors’ frowns turn into expressions 
of congratulation. 

To say to yourself, “I will take it like a 
soldier,” will immediately change your whole 
outlook on life, nay, that is not all—^just how 
one meets the changed circumstances of one’s 
objective world, is the expression of one’s 
individual thinking. 

To feel that you are a beaten soldier is to 
acknowledge and accept defeat. To think that 
you belong to the regiment, to think that you 
are a “marine,” to think that no matter what 
comes you can take it like a soldier, is to change 


36 


SPUNK 


your inner being, which in turn will change your 
outward world. 

Your conditions today or tomorrow all depend 
upon your mental attitude. 

Takedt-like^a-soldier-mentahattitude spells suc" 
cess and happiness. Take it in any other kind of 
an attitude and, good night! No one can tell 
what will happen. 

Take everything today and tomorrow and 
forever like a soldier and everything good that 
the world has to give to you and yours will in turn 
be dispensed as a good soldier desires it to be. 


Chapter VI 


EACH CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING 

E ach cloud has a silver lining, but, you 
say, you don’t believe it. Pshaw, that’s 
all in your way of thinking just now. You 
will change your mind tomorrow. When a 
person is going through ‘The Valley of the 
Shadow of Death,” of trudging the tread-mill of 
life’s monotony, or has his back up against the 
wall of difficulty and misfortune, it seems to 
be the natural thing for him to see only the 
present, forget all about the past and give no 
thought to the future. The truth of the matter 
is that in the past there have been thousands 
more of clouds with silver than with any other 
species of lining. Furthermore, if you keep the 
right frame of mind during the time when the 
clouds are hovering near, there will be thousands 
of brighter clouds in the future. Whether your 
clouds remain long or not depends upon how 
you think. Whether your future clouds will all 
have silver linings, also depends upon how you 
think. 

If you think the clouds are dark now and are 


37 


38 


SPUNK 


going to remain dark, you can just bet your 
bottom dollar that they will be dark for some 
time; and if you are unpsychological enough to 
think that the future holds no bright clouds 
for you, you can also bet your very last copper 
that there will be lots of dark clouds in the future. 

Whether your life has dark clouds with many 
silver linings, or dark clouds with mourning 
embroidery, all depends upon your attitude of 
mind. 

Where are the fellows who have never had 
any dark clouds? Can you name them? No, 
not one. That seems to be the law of life in 
our state of consciousness and why should you 
expect to be a favored son of Adam, to have 
nothing but sunshine and flowers, silver linings, 
and golden sunsets? 

Of course, in the future, when we reach the 
higher state of consciousness, there will be no 
such thing as a dark cloud, but we are living 
today—here—now. Your dark clouds may come, 
but they will soon disperse if you think they 
will. 

Honest to goodness, down in your heart today, 
you know that things are better for you than 
they used to be. Aha, I hear you say: “No, 
that is not so, I used to have money, but it 
got away.” “I had a sweetheart, but I lost her.” 
(Maybe that was mighty good for her—who 


EACH CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING 39 

can tell?) Or, “I had a business, and it is all 
shot to pieces.” 

Sure, you can say such things as that—anybody 
can. But down in your heart, you know that 
the fire of experience has made you a better 
human being and that although you have lost 
money or love or business it has not actually 
been a loss, but an investment. The experience 
you have got out of this lost investment is a 
thing which will make you better now, and give 
you more money, love, and business in the future. 

Every experience of life is good. The psychol¬ 
ogy of all dark clouds is to turn them all into 
silver linings. Right thinking will do it. You 
can do it, the same as others have done it. 

I know a man who lost a thousand dollars a 
week for nearly a year. He did not grumble. 
He did not complain. All the time, he held the 
thought that what he was losing would come 
back to him in a greater way, and why not? 
The psychology of the whole affair was that he 
was tickled to death that he had a thousand 
dollars a week to lose for so long a time. Five 
years before, he had never had a thousand dollars 
in his life. The thousands he had made, he 
maintained, would be made again with interest 
added. He had not lost a dollar of his principal. 
Surely, any human being instead of complaining 
about a loss or about dark clouds, ought to be 


40 


SPUNK 


tickled to death that he could afford to have a 

loss. It is better to have loved and lost than 
never to have loved at all, so sang the poet 
Tennyson. It is better to have money to lose, 
than never to have had any. And when it is 

lost, it is bound to come back, if you keep the 
right attitude of mind. 

What is your dark cloud anyway, compared 
with the other fellow’s! Fll bet a penny that 
right now you are making mountains out of 
mole-hills. If some other poor rascal who has 
had affliction following upon the heels of affliction, 
and one sorrow chasing the other sorrow in quick 
succession, and one loss following another, had 
experienced merely the little trouble you are 
having now, he would think he was on a joyride 
or Fourth of July picnic. It is all a state of mind. 
You’re magnifying your little troubles, while the 
other great trouble bearer is taking his like a 
soldier. 

Buck up! Get a grip on yourself. Point a 
finger of disgust at yourself for daring to entertain 
the idea that the dark cloud is dark. Right 
now it is bursting with showers of bright-linings, 
and you do not know it. Your own mental 
attitude of gloom and discouragement is pushing 
back the silver lining and the silver rays of 
success, health and happiness are not able to 
penetrate the dark clouds of your mental imagery. 


EACH CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING 41 

It s all in a lifetime, anyway, whatever happens, 
and you ought to be tickled to death that you 
can have it happen. Because, whatever happens 
is for the best, if you think so, and tomorrow 
all of your clouds will be covered with layers 
upon layers of silver. 

There are no dark clouds unless you believe 
it. There are no troubles but can be turned into 
joy, unless you deem it otherwise; there are no 
losses that are not gains, unless you confess it; 
there are no experiences of life but those that 
are for your good, unless you think it. 

Whatever you have comes by thinking. Yesir- 
ree, even your black clouds are a matter of your 
own thinking. Remember, it is always darkest 
before dawn. 


DARKEST BEFORE DAWN 


The clouds seem to float in more silent array. 

And the hush to grow palpable, just before day. 

All the forces of Nature seem subtly combined 
To strike solemn awe into man’s mortal mind. 

If we did not expect such an hour dark and still. 

It would seem that the gloom were an omen of ill. 

But we enter this stillness, this black cosmic shroud. 
Knowing well that the daylight will push back the cloud. 

From childhood’s glad gambol on life’s happy lawn 
Man learns that it’s gloomiest just before dawn. 

And so as he rambles by streamlet or bower. 

His heart turns to worship, whatever the hour. 

Be it darksome and cold, ere the birds are awake. 

He is never too weary obeisance to make. 

Though he shrinks just a trifle as darkness grows deep. 
He knows that the dawn o’er the hill will soon peep. 

And so on life’s pathways by every man trod. 

Each must cherish a faith in himself and his God. 

When a cloud of disaster appears in the sky. 

And beneath its fell torrents defeated we lie; 

When we think that the rainbow will never appear. 
When no angel seems present to wipe our last tear; 

Let us spring back to childhood, as Hght as a fawn. 

And recall the old lesson of dusk before dawn. 

In life, as in Nature, clouds gather and pass; 

And their long trailing shadows float by on the grass. 


42 


DARKEST BEFORE DAWN 


43 


As thicker they come in their nebulous flight, 

We fear that the next will bring terror and night. 

But lo! like the darkness preceding the dawn 
The worst ones soon lift, and depart from the lawn; 
While the sun, all the fairer for being away. 

Gleams above the green branches and gladdens the day! 

No grief e’er so gruesome, no night e’er so black. 

But that rosy Aurora will push the clouds back; 

So when troubles seem thickest, like gusts of foul smoke. 
And with fast-ebbing spirits in darkness we choke; 
When we think that our efforts have all been in vain. 
And our souls groan aloud in their terror and pain; 
When before us but gulfs of black space seem to yawn. 
Then remember the lesson of dusk before dawn! 


Chapter VII 


"WHY AN EAGLETS ON THE DOLLAR** 

A MAN past middle life, very much in 
the dumps, down at the heel, with a 
hole in his pocket-book and nothing to 
put in it, told me that he knew why the eagle is on 
the dollar. ''It flies away so I can’t get it!” 

That man’s lack of abundance was purely a 
matter of his mind. He had a wrong idea of 
what the eagle is on the dollar for. As long as 
he thinks the eagle is on the dollar to make him 
chase it, all the chasing in the world can never 
let him catch up to it, and he is going to have 
a merry chase after a lot of eagles he will never 
catch. He will never even get near enough to put 
salt on their tails. He has the wrong slant. 

If a man thinks money is going to get away 
from him, it will get there and in a hurry. And 
the bigger he thinks the eagle is, and the more 
power he thinks it has in its wings, the faster 
the dollars are going to fly away from him, and 
the harder he is going to puff in trying to shoot 
some of the eagles and put them in his game bag. 
That man did not know what the wings are 


44 


“WHY AN EAGLE’S ON THE DOLLAR” 45 

on the eagle for, but I will tell you. The eagle 
is on the dollar with good, strong wings, flying 
your way, and bringing oodles and oodles and 
oodles of sixteen-to-ones with him. Get your 
game net ready to coop ’em! They are flying 
your way, but they’re going to pass you if you 
don’t corral them. And they’ll never even come 
your way if you think they’re going in the 
opposite direction. 

Get the right idea of the dollar, and the dollar 
will get to you! 


Chapter VIII 


‘*WHAT ARE YOUR NEEDS?*’ 


HE more your needs, the more should 



be your accomplishments in the future. 


Needs form Nature’s spurring way of 
pushing a man up and up and up. 

The flower pushes itself through the soil 
because it needs the sunshine. Go out into 
the forest and see how the tall trees gradually 
push themselves upward. Sometimes we find 
great trunks perceptibly inclined toward a lighter 
space and sometimes we notice more limbs on 
the sunnier side of a tree than on the other. 
Such anomalies when not due to the great north*' 
west winds are invariably due to the tree’s quest 
for light. It strives for all the light it needs 
and in the effort grows more on one side than 
on the other. 

What are your needs? The more your needs, 
the more nature grants you in the way of dynamic 
urge and inward push to seek that which you 


46 


“WHAT ARE YOUR NEEDS?" 


47 


want. If your needs are great, then you know 
that your fulfillment in the future will be great, 
provided you keep the right attitude of mind. 
Believe you will achieve, that you’re going to 
get there, that you can, you will! 

The history of nature, human and subhuman, 
is the same story of need and its fulfillment. 
The biologist gives the theory that the seal was 
originally a land animal of the wolf or dog 
variety which during dangers and protracted 
famines on land sought its food first nearer and 
nearer and finally in the water. It has now 
acquired most of the characteristics of an aquatic 
animal, nature having come to its aid in the face 
of its great need and its equally great determination. 

Need was the impetus for the change. Im¬ 
pressed and constantly reimpressed by the need 
of existence, generation after another achieved 
the modifications which culminated in the seal 
form. 

Your greatest growth, no doubt, will come 
because you have more needs—you need educa¬ 
tion, you need better environment, you need 
more money, you need success. The more your 
needs, the greater within you will be that urge 
and pushing toward the sunlight of success. 

Be thankful that you have lots of needs. 
Rejoice that there are many things which you 


48 


SPUNK 


Still desire, and be happy that you are in a 
world where the response to your needs, if you 
properly apply yourself, will bring to you the 
thing you want. 

Rejoice in your needs! 


Chapter IX 


DO you BELIEVE IN SIGNS? 

D O YOU believe in “signs”—“bad luck”? 
I should like to devote about one hundred 
pages to ridiculing the foolish supersti¬ 
tions attaching to many little, harmless things 
which we think bring us bad luck. 

Friday, the thirteenth, for instance. 

If you spill the salt, you are going to have 
trouble in the house. 

If you break a mirror you are in for seven 
years’ bad luck, etc., etc. 

Bad luck to walk under a ladder. It may 
be bad luck if there’s a careless painter on top 
and he spills his paint can as you pass under. 

Some good people think that if a black cat 
crosses their path at night, they are also in for 
a streak of bad luck. 

There is really some common sense in saying 
if you crossed the trail of a skunk after dark and 
unexpectedly stubbed your toe on his frame, 
you are liable to have bad luck if his perfume 
tank is operating. That’s about the only bad 
luck you would have. But of course to some 


49 


50 


SPUNK 


people that would be bad enough, especially if 
they were on a vacation and that was the only 
suit of clothes they had with them. But you 
see the mind doesn’t produce that kind of bad 
luck—the kind that lets you stumble on skunks 
in the dark, whose only way to protect them-' 
selves from big, giant enemies like yourself, is the 
end of a tail and the swish of a smelling tank. 

There, is no bad luck anywhere unless your 
thinking makes it so. Your only bad luck is 
expecting to have it—we get what we expect. 
Expect bad luck and skunks, and bad luck and 
skunks are what you may get. Expect good 
luck and love, and love and good luck you’ll get. 
Get busy on good luck getting. 


Chapter X 


PATIENCE SHOT TO PIECES 


H ave your plans misfired, your hopes 
been blown to smithereens, your ambi¬ 
tion dampened, your spirit squelched and 
your backbone weakened? In short, are you 
all shot to pieces? Fiddlesticks! Just because 
you happen to feel like a worn dime with a hole 
in it that can’t be cashed any more than a sixty- 
four shin-plaster, you think everything has gone 
to pieces for you. Piffle! That’s the way you 
feel today—but wait until tomorrow! 

You’ve been down in the dumps before, 
haven’t you? Sure you have and you admit it. 
If you have ever had any kind of experience like 
other ordinary human beings who have climbed 
to the top, you’ve been shot to pieces on many 
occasions before and you got the pieces together 
again, trudged on your way rejoicing, thanking 
God that you had a chance to get a few holes 
punched into you with a few stray shots of 
Misfortune’s gatling gun. 

Where is the fellow who hasn’t been shot 
to pieces a few times? You must not think 


51 


52 


SPUNK 


that you are the only favored son of man who 
has been rammed through by the spears of 
experience. Ah ha! my good fellow, how very 
complimentary to yourself to think that you 
alone have been thus favored. 

But no such thing! There are others—you 
are only one in the great army of men who have 
been shot to pieces a few times. You are only 
one of many who have been rammed through 
many, many times. You are only one in the rank 
and file of the great army of life, every soul in 
which has had the privilege of having been shot 
to pieces. Your shots haven’t torn you any 
more than they have torn your comrades. You 
only think so—that’s all. 

You’re nursing an inflated bump of ego—to 
think that you can be shot to pieces and still 
live. Thousands before you have been treated 
likewise, my dear comrade, and they have sur- 
vived. Yes, right today thousands of others in 
the same army as yourself, wearing civilian 
clothes, have had their coats of arms riddled 
with the bullets of life’s tough battles, but they 
are marching on to new successes, greater power 
and wider influence. 

You can do the same thing. It’s a matter of 
mind. You want to change your mind, and— 
if your clothes have been too riddled with old 
bullets of long thinking—change your clothes. 


PATIENCE SHOT TO PIECES 


53 


A few stray shots from the enemy’s ranks having 
riddled them and shot you to pieces are no indica- 
tion that the enemy can keep up his firing forever 
and forever. One of these days his barrage 
must stop—his bombarding must cease and his 
onslaught be checked. The sooner you change 
your mind and resolve that your ‘'shot to pieces” 
stuff is imaginary, the sooner will you be able 
to face the enemy and call him yours. 

Did you ever see a soldier returning from the 
front not proud to say that he had been in the 
thick of the fight, had borne the brunt of the 
battle and had come back with scars? Did you 
ever see a real he^soldier limp back to sit on the 
curbstone, place his finger in the bullet riddled 
holes of his old uniform and whine because he 
had been hit a time or two? No—the real hero 
stands up; m.aybe one leg is gone, but he stands 
as erect as he formerly did on both. He throws 
back his shoulders and his eyes flash as he tells 
about the battle he was in, how the enemy was 
put to rout, how finally the flag of victory was 
planted upon the enemy’s fortifications. 

That’s hero stuff for you! That’s the army 
example for you! That’s the only thing you 
dare emulate. You dare not be so unpsycholog- 
ical as to m.ourn over your shot-to-pieces situation 
and condition. 

If you believe in your success and your triumph 


54 


SPUNK 


and in your power, if you continually hold the 
thought of success, employment, promotion, 
affluence, harmony, prosperity, growth and love 
in mind, you will soon forget you are shot to 
pieces. You will change your clothes of wrong 
thinking and put on the new garments of right 
thinking. When you change your mind, you 
change your condition. 

If you have been shot to pieces, what of it— 
so have thousands of others. But, if you con- 
tinue in this frame of mind, you will be shot to 
pieces a few more times before you get through 
and shuffle off this mortal coil. Yes, I can give 
you the positive assurance that if you continue 
to think about being shot to pieces you are 
going to get a few shots that you did not expect 
and then you really may have something to 
complain about. 

But as it is now, you aren’t badly hurt. The 
fellow next to you has suffered more wounds 
than you. There, just to the right of you, is 
one who has been shot to pieces a do2;en times 
more than you. Look at the poor fellow on your 
left who hasn’t been able to change his clothes 
since the last conflict because he has been shot 
to pieces so often there isn’t anything left to 
change. He is still marching on and here you 
sit down, complain, sigh and want to quit the 


PATIENCE SHOT TO PIECES 


55 


game of life, all because your new uniform has 
been the target for a few stray shots. 

Get the mental attitude that all things are 
right, that all things are good, that all things are 
prosperous, that all things are delightful and 
that all things are harmonious. Hold that attitude 
and see how quickly a change of clothes will be 
brought about. It will be like sleight'of'hand, you 
won’t know what happened, but will have on a 
new suit quicker than Cinderella lost her rags 
and was made ready for the ball. 

What do you care if your suit has been shot 
to pieces a few times—goodness me! you ought 
to be tickled to death that you have an excuse to 
get rid of the old suit and if perchance a few 
stray shots should riddle the coat tail of your 
new one, you ought again to rejoice that here 
is another excuse for a transformation, because 
each time you change clothes, you are changing 
your condition for the better. It is only the 
man who can buy many suits of clothes each 
year who feels intimations of oncoming triumph 
and if you can change a few suits of clothes each 
year, because you are forced to do it by cir^ 
cumstances and by stray bullets, you ought to 
be tickled to death over your good luck. 

Thank the Lord that you have had enough 
shots shot through you that you can get rid of 
the old suit and can put on a new one. 


56 


SPUNK 


Now look at yourself in the mirror. Don’t 
you look better? You really don’t know yourself 
now. When you go home tonight your wife 
will have to call in the neighbors to tell her 
who you are. You have changed your clothes 
and you have changed your mind and by changing 
your clothes and changing your mind you have 
changed your expression so that now you are a 
new man. Render thanks to the battle of life 
and be grateful for all it has done for you. 

There are thousands of people today who, if 
they only knew it, would like to have the same 
discouraging experiences that you have had, in 
order that they, like you would be forced to 
get new clothes. A man can’t wear a do2;en 
new suits of clothes each year without raising 
the rate of his vibration for greater success, 
health and happiness and if you can have the 
excuse to get some new clothes because the old 
ones have been shot to pieces, take your excuse 
and thank God that you have good reason for 
discarding old for new. After you have become 
accustomed to your new suits of clothes and to 
your new attitude of mind, you will then have 
the joy of becoming accustomed to your new 
circumstances, to your new position, to your 
new success. 

Shot to pieces, eh? What a lucky chap you 
have been! Many another fellow has been shot 


PATIENCE SHOT TO PIECES 


57 


to pieces and carried out by the undertaker. Here 
you’ve been shot to pieces all in your mind and the 
clothier comes along and puts on you a new Hart, 
SchafFner ^ Marx suit, dresses you up like a 
king and sends you out among the captains of 
industry. 

If we were not psychologists we might envy 
you the experience of having been shot to pieces 
because it has changed your mind and so put 
you on the high road for bigger things. 

Shot to pieces, eh? How glad we are for you 
and how we trust you are wise enough to be 
wise for yourself. Shot to pieces, eh? Why, if 
you hadn’t been shot to pieces a do2;en times or 
so to rouse your fighting spirit and make you 
dig in your toes, clinch your fists, set your jaw 
and go forward at the next bugle call of experi" 
ence, you would by now be noth’ng but a 
second rater, and probably a down^and-outer. 
But here you are, thinking along new lines, getting 
ready for the next advance, having your mind in 
tune with the infinite, preparing to be crowned 
with the laurel wreath of the victor and have 
pinned upon your breast the world’s croix de 
guerre. 

Glad to hear you say you have been shot 
to pieces, glad to see your face changed, your 
clothes changed and the fresh march begun. 
Go forward with the mental decision that you 


58 


SPUNK 


no more in the future will recogni 2 ;e stray shots 
which riddled your clothing, upset your plans 
and blocked your way. 

Success is in your mind, change your mind 
and have success. 


Chapter XI 


THE BATHTUB AND YOU 


W E ARE told on good authority that the 
first bathtub in the United States was 
installed in Cincinnati, Ohio, on De- 
cember 20, 1842, by Adam Thompson. It was 
made of mahogany and lined with sheet lead. 
At a Christmas party he exhibited and explained 
it, and four guests later took a plunge. The 
next day, the Cincinnati papers devoted many 
columns to the new invention, and violent 
controversy soon arose regarding it. 

Some papers designated it as an Epicurean 
luxury, others called it undemocratic, as it lacked 
simplicity in its surroundings. Medical authors 
ties attacked it as dangerous to health. 

The controversy soon reached other cities 
and in more than one place medical opposition 
was reflected in legislation. In 1843, the Phila^ 
delphia Common Council considered an ordinance 
prohibiting bathing between November 1st and 
March 15th, which failed of passage by but 
two votes. 

During the same year the Legislature of 


59 


60 


SPUNK 


Virginia laid a tax of $30.00 per year on every 
bathtub that might be set up. In Hartford, 
Providence, Charleston and Wilmington, Dela^ 
ware, special and very heavy water rates were 
laid upon persons who had bathtubs. Boston, 
in 1845, made bathing unlawful except on medical 
advice; but the ordinance was never enforced and 
in 1863 was repealed. 

When you are inclined to be down in the 
dumps, remember the bathtub. It came out 
all right. So will you. 

No matter what your “ups and downs” are, 
you haven’t anything on the bathtub. We 
magnify our own troubles and build imaginary 
ones until we really think we have troubles, 
but, like everything else, our troubles are mostly 
in our minds. 

Suppose the bathtub had thought of the 
troubles ahead of it—what it might bump into, 
where it was going to land and what would be 
its final outcome. Maybe you and I would still 
be taking our baths in a thimbleful of water 
dumped into the wash basin, whereas, thanks 
to the fact that the bathtub triumphed over all 
its difficulties, we can hop into a nice porcelain 
tub, take our plunge and go on our way rejoicing. 
If the bathtub can come out all right, how about 
a man? How about you? 

We have just about as many troubles as we 


THE BATHTUB AND YOU 


61 


think we have, no more; and it is just as easy to 
overcome the little stumbling blocks of the 
future, if we think we can, as it is to eat peas 
with a knife. It is all a matter of getting used 
to it. Maybe you haven’t had enough troubles 
yet to get used to them. That’s your trouble. 
If a few more troubles had got you used to 
trouble then you could take the troubles that 
are ahead of you without any trouble. It’s a 
good thing “never to trouble trouble until 
trouble troubles you,” then you can take the 
troubles that are ahead of you without any 
trouble. It’s a good thing ‘'never to trouble 
trouble until trouble troubles you.” That’s what 
the bathtub did. 

And then, when the bathtub did get into 
trouble, it didn’t pay any attention to the trouble 
that it had tumbled into. What are your ups 
and downs anyhow compared to the bathtub’s 
trouble? Have you ever been called undemo¬ 
cratic? Have you been attacked by the medical 
authorities? Have narrow-minded, contracted, 
bigoted, muddle-headed legislators dragged your 
name into court, and tried to make laws pro¬ 
hibiting the use of your name or forbidding you 
to proceed with your private affairs? Has your 
name been covered with as much mud as the 
bathtub’s? 

Then recall the different steps the bathtub 


62 


SPUNK 


had to encounter all the way from the old- 
fashioned kind up to the porcelain. It has been 
one step of advance after another, despite the 
fact that many efforts were made to impede its 
progress. 

How many hard things have been put in 
your way? How many difficulties have you 
been forced to surmount? How much mud have 
you had to get off your name? Why, that 
doesn’t matter. Look up and learn a lesson from 
the lily, the buttercup and the bathtub. Shake¬ 
speare says we find sermons in stones, books in 
the running brooks and good in everything. 
When you look about searching for sermons, why 
not turn to the bathtub? It’s a new idea, but 
it may be a good one. Surely you are worth 
as much as many bathtubs. 

Have your trials, mistakes, troubles, sorrows, 
failures and limitations been ping-ponged back 
and forth from Cincinnati to Philadelphia, and 
Philadelphia to Boston, and Boston to Wilmington 
and Wilmington to Hartford, and Hartford to 
Providence and back again? Until then you 
haven’t anything on the bathtub. 

When you are down in the mouth, remember 
Jonah. He came out all right, so did the bathtub. 


Chapter XII 


HOW ARE you? 


T he Hindoos have a most charming form 
of salutation, namely: ‘‘I salute the Divine 
in you.” Compare that with the way 
we greet one another in our country, in this 
civili^d bulhpen of the U. S. A., to wit: ”How 
are you?” 

If a man got out on the wrong side of the 
bed in the morning, or if he ate too much apple 
pie too late at night, if he started the day with 
a grouch, or if he has a “torpid liver,” see what 
a toboggan slide you thrust this man onto by 
saying: “How are you?” Instantly, his pie- 
eating dyspepsia becomes worse, his grouch more 
grouchy, his “torpid liver” more torpid and 
altogether he is a much worse man after you 
said “How are you?” than he was before. 

When you inquire, “How are you?” of an 
easily affected person or one who thinks he is in 
a hard way, you straightway put into his hand a 
“suggestion” dagger with which he immediately 
begins to rip open his old sores, slash his old 
scars and cut his own throat—in mind. 


63 


64 


SPUNK 


“How are you?” The response will probably 
be, “I am worse,” without even a thank you, 
but when two Hindoos meet in the East and 
their salutations to one another are, “I salute 
the Divine in you,” instantly the rate of vibration 
goes up; the mind feels linked with the Power 
House of Divinity from which emanates perfect 
health, success and happiness—not dyspepsia, 
grouch or “torpid livers.” 

“I salute the Divine in you” is not so bad for 
the “poor benighted Hindoo” after all, is it? 

The Divine in me salutes the Divine in you! 


Chapter XIII 


WHY AND WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 



iHE old adage that “a man is as old as 


he thinks he is” has more truth than 


poetry in it. The fact is, a man becomes 
older in mind sooner than he does in body. 
To illustrate: If a man were to carry his arm 
in a sling for six months without using it, he 
would find considerable difficulty in using it 
when the sling was removed. The same is true 
with the mind, only more so—it degenerates 
more rapidly with misuse. When the mind is 
not stimulated to function, it becomes useless 
and atrophies. 

It is a common expression to be heard from 
those on the lookout for jobs that “the world 
is hard on an old man”—that business wants 
the young man—that professions are kinder to 
the young man than to the old, that a penalty 
has been placed upon old age. As a matter of 
fact, a penalty is not imposed upon a man because 
of the age of his body, it is only the old in mind 
who are penali 2 ied. We find many men old in 
body but young in mind and vice versa. 


65 


66 


SPUNK 


The trouble with so many people lies in the 
fact that they exercise their bodies in stimulating 
work without attempting to exercise their mental 
faculties in stimulating thought. The body is so 
constituted that it may carry itself for many 
years and daily do a full day’s work, and be 
serviceable more than sixty years. But, unless 
the mind is exercised, the body will become 
wasted, sluggish, and lacking in alertness. In 
order to keep the mind active and young it 
must be used just as the body must be used to 
keep it in trim. We see the result of the proper 
use, or lack of use of the body in the early 
twenties—it is not necessary to wait until the 
sixties. For instance, between the ages of 
twenty and forty or fifty, a man who is normal 
can do a good day’s work. We mean by that, 
of course, that his muscles will stand the strain, 
and his body will carry the burden. If he has 
lived a normal existence, he will still be able to 
bear the cares and shocks of life. It is interesting 
to notice the mind of the same person in the 
twenties and in the forties and sixties. As a boy 
in the early teens he graduates from the elemen- 
tary school and enters the high school. The 
third year in the high school he leaves. We will 
grant he is now sixteen years of age. He leaves 
school because he has never been forced to use 
his mind, and he goes out to work. He uses his 


WHY AND WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 67 


body consistently, keeps his muscles in trim, 
but lo, what happens to the mind? Within five 
years of leaving school, if this sixteen-year-old 
boy, now twenty^one years of age, should try 
to make his grade to go back to high school, or 
to make up lost studies to enter college, he 
would tell you that it was a tremendously hard 
thing to do. He would tell you it is harder to 
get his brain to work for him than his muscles. 

I believe every individual, whether he is of 
the mental type or any other type, who has had 
in his young manhood years of non^training of 
the brain, when he wanted to go back to college 
again, or take up studies or in some other way 
improve his mind, found that it was harder for 
him, though still in his twenties, to use his 
mind than his body. 

You see, therefore, that the mind becomes 
old much quicker than the body. That a man is 
as old as he thinks he is, is as true as can be. 

Carry the analogy a little further and you 
will discover that this twenty-one-year-old man 
who has thought that he should like to resume 
his school work, finds the effort too severe. He 
takes a little night school work, but it’s a great 
effort to get his mind to become active. He 
sweats more brain sweat now than he ever 
sweated perspiration before. In six months or 
so, he finally gives up the educational fancy and 


68 


SPUNK 


decides that he will continue in the commercial 
world, in his trade, or it may be at manual labor, 
where he can pick up an odd job now and then. 
He can continue his work now until he is sixty. 
At forty he can keep up with the other men in 
the gang. 

But what about his mind? By the time he is 
thirty^five his mind has become so warped, has 
become so useless from lack of exercise, that he 
is not as charitable or as big in soul as when he 
was twenty^one. His mind has been allowed 
to run in a groove. He has got into a rut. The 
mind has not had a chance to exercise. He has 
taken on certain physical and mental habits. He 
thinks only along certain channels. He cannot 
accept the other man’s point of view unless it 
conforms to his narrow-minded, one-track vision 
which he has been nursing for the previous ten 
to fifteen years. By the time he is thirty-five 
years of age, if he has read but little, if he has 
taken in but few lectures, if he has not associated 
with people of a mental type who are discussing 
the current events of the day or art, literature, 
science or politics, he has become a one-track, 
one-sided, narrow-gauged individual who is, in 
fact, a much less charitable citi 2 ;en than when he 
became of age. At thirty-five he’s more narrow, 
more set in his ways and more determined in his 
untrained point of view than he was at twenty-one. 


WHY AND WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 69 


His mind has become old much quicker than 
his body. He has heard that by the time a 
man is forty-five it is time for him to wear glasses, 
and so when he reaches forty he is looking forward 
to the day when he shall have to put window 
panes in front of his eyes, or hang goggles on the 
bridge of his nose. He hears that when a man 
is sixty, it is time for him to get ready to die, 
that he will be an old man by the time he is 
fifty-five, therefore, his mind gets into the habit 
of thinking of old age, of thinking it is time to 
get ready to die, so that by the time he reaches 
fifty'five, he is actually an old man. Although 
his muscles will work for him and he can still 
do a fair day’s work, he is old in mind and because 
he has thought along old age lines his body 
becomes a little weakened. At the age of sixty 
he is expecting old age to creep upon him, and lo, 
the thing that he feared has come upon him! 
He has heard that a man gets his second childhood 
and his dotage, so if perchance he lives until 
seventy, he is expecting soon not only to lose his 
eyesight, and become so weakened that he may 
have to be helped around, but he expects that 
he is going to lose his mind, is going to take on 
his second childhood, revert to the childish mind 
and lo, again, the thing which he has feared 
comes upon him! 

A man is indeed as old as he thinks he is. 


70 


SPUNK 


Now will you follow me as I try to solve some 
of the problems of the hour and will you but 
consider a moment what it means in the industrial 
world for a man to become old in mind before 
he becomes old in body. 

True, it is hard for a man at the age of forty 
to go out into new fields of endeavor to seek a 
job, whether manual or mental. Why? He is 
old in mind before he is old in body. What do 
I mean by that? In addition to what I have 
already said, he has become so warped in his 
mind that he is now a grouch in his narrow- 
tracked mental rut. He is so ‘‘done gone sot’' in 
his ways, that he can accept the point of view 
of no one else; he is old in his mind. He can 
tolerate no instruction that might show him 
how to do his work a little better—^he is old 
in his mind. He will not accept the well-meant 
suggestion of his superiors that he take up new 
and improved methods. Why? He is old in 
his mind. He becomes so set in his way that his 
mind cannot act flexibly, his mind will not 
respond quickly. His mind has been so held 
on one mental plane for the last twenty years 
that he cannot use it to consider the point of 
view of anyone else. All he can see is his own 
little narrow-minded contracted groove that he 
is in and when the boss would like to pull him 
from his rut to place him on a high road where 


WHY AND WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 7l 


there would be better pay, advancement, and 
more influence, he cannot see the business or the 
recommendation through his colored goggles of 
ignorance and prejudice. 

He is older in mind than his boss of seventy. 
The boss has grown with the times. The boss 
has kept his eyes open. The boss has used his 
mind to see new devices come in, to see new 
business methods used, to see conditions change 
ing, and the boss has been able to adjust himself 
and change with the times, but the forty-year-old 
subordinate who is in the same old job where 
he has been for the last ten or fifteen years, has 
not changed with the times—he has remained old 
in mind and grows older by his wrong thinking 
every day. He wonders why he is not promoted 
or why he cannot get a job—he is too one-sided 
and set in his way to be of much use. 

Therefore, I am making a plea in this modern 
day (although I have always been for the in¬ 
dustrial man and always shall be, I have always 
fought for the under dog and I always shall)—I 
am making a sensible psychological plea in this 
day of ours, to people who think the economic 
world is using them unfairly and unjustly, that 
they use psychology, that they get their minds 
to work, that they change with conditions, that 
they change with the times, that they meet 
the situations of the hour, if they wish to develop 


72 


SPUNK 


and grow and be an influence and a power in 
the world which they may now be condemning, 
not because the world is at fault, but because 
they themselves are old in mind. 

It is not fair, much as we deplore some of 
the underhand methods of modern business, it is 
not fair to blame the modern business man for 
relegating men at the age of forty to the bench. 
If a man is on the bench at the age of forty or 
fifty, he has no one to blame but himself. He 
has become old in mind long before he became 
old in body. 

It is well understood psychologically and 
otherwise that most people at the age of forty 
have had their habits physically and mentally so 
set that it is hard for them to change—they are 
old in mind. This old world of ours takes a 
new somersault about every twenty-four hours 
or less and we are changing our opinions and 
our conditions and our ideas and our methods so 
rapidly that what we used twenty years ago 
in the business world, is absolutely discarded 
today. The man who is conducting business 
along the same methods as he conducted business 
a quarter of a century ago is a man who is in 
a little two by four ''joint.” He who has kept 
pace with the times, who has changed his business 
methods to meet the requirements of the hour, is 
the captain of industry. The difference between 


WHY AND WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 73 

little and big business men is in many instances a 
difference of mind. One has grown and developed, 
but kept young while he used his brain and 
exercised his mind; the other has grown old by 
lack of mental exercise, by putting his mind in 
a mental sling. 

Anyone who has ever employed people knows 
that it is much easier to give instructions, and 
have them carried out, to a person who is in 
the early twenties than a person who is in the 
early thirties; and anyone who has ever em- 
ployed many people also knows that by the time 
a man reaches thirty^nine or forty or forty^five 
it is very difficult to get him to follow new 
instructions. He is a one-track minded man, 
he is in a rut, he is down in the gutter of old, 
old age, and he prefers to stay in his mental rut 
than exercise his mind to get out. He complains, 
he blames the world, he curses the modern 
business methods because at the age of forty 
or fifty he is looking for a job and no one wants 
the old crab. 

Therefore, you see the necessity of a study 
of psychology in this day in which we are living. 
Any person who has left school at the age of 
sixteen (going back to our analogy), who has 
made use of his mind by reading newspapers, 
books, magazines, going to lectures, taking in 
extension courses, improving his mind by cor^ 




74 


SPUNK 


respondence courses, by associating with people 
who discuss art, literature, science or current 
events, may never have had an opportunity to 
finish his college education and yet at the age 
of forty he is still young, he is just beginning 
to get ready for his life’s work. His body is 
in the pink of perfection, and his mind is likewise 
active and like a race horse, ready to go at the 
drop of a suggestion. This same person who has 
kept his mind, during these fourteen years, active 
by mental exercises, at the age of forty is ready 
to take up some great life’s work. At the age 
of fifty he is still better than at the age of forty. 
When he reaches sixty he is taking on greater 
and greater mental work. He can continue this 
until Father Time shall come and claim him 
for his own. 

Verily, one is as old as he thinks he is. A 
man can work mentally until he is ninety or a 
hundred years of age, and if he has exercised 
his mind during that time, at the age of eighty 
or ninety, when the body becomes a little frail, 
his mind is stronger than ever. 

So the man who is on the bench today at the 
age of forty, who is blaming modern conditions 
because he cannot get a job ought to see himself 
as others see him. If he really takes account of 
stock, he will see that he has been a mental 
sluggard. He has been la2iy in mind so long 


WHY AND WHEN IS A MAN OLD? 75 

that he has become old in mind—out of joint 
with the times, without ambition and laying all 
blame for his failure in life upon his employer. 

How much this old world needs psychology, 
that people may get the right mental attitude, 
that people may develop their minds, keep their 
souls aflame and their brains active, alert and 
a-going! 


Chapter XIV 


*7HINK PLEASANT** 

O PERSON should ever go to bed at 



night without having pleasant thoughts 


^ as he drops off to sleep. He should form 
the habit of using this time to charge his sub¬ 
conscious mind with what he desires, always, 
however, with a positive, health, success or 
happy thought. ‘’'But,” says some old grouch, 
"I can’t go to bed at night 'thinking pleasant’ 
when I haven’t looked pleasant for forty years.” 
Why haven’t you looked pleasant for forty years? 
You look as though you haven’t looked pleasant 
for four hundred years, all right. Your phi2; is 
the tell-tale of some bad thinking on your part, but 
"Cheer up. While there is life, there is hope.” 
The worst old grouch can yet have a smile on 
his face and his kiddies call him blessed. 

You can always have a pleasant thought when 
you are awake in the morning. As you take 
your exercises, positive, health, success and 
happy thoughts should be in your consciousness. 
It is better, of course, to take an affirmation while 
you are exercising, but the point I want to 


76 


“THINK PLEASANT” 


77 


make is that you must not allow yourself to 
entertain unpleasant thoughts for a single minute. 

And the harder it is for you to thin\ pleasant 
thoughts, the greater evidence that you need to do it. 

The worse you feel and the harder it seems 
to hold these pleasant thoughts, the more neces- 
sary they are for you, and the more good you 
will receive from them if you persist until you 
get hold of them. If you say, “I can’t do it”— 
“I don’t feel like it”—‘Til wait for some more 
convenient day,” you are putting off until tomor- 
row what ought to be done this very minute. 
Hop to it. Now is the time. You need to hold 
a pleasant thought more than the other fellow. 
In fact, you must! We will not let you do any 
otherwise. 

Things have been going wrong at the office, 
have they? No wonder. You’ve been holding 
wrong thoughts. Everything seems to be jumbled 
in your business, the work shop is all “out of 
kilter” and your home is topsy turvy. Of course 
they are. You’ve been having wrong thoughts. 
Think pleasant and see what a change there will 
be, and the harder it is for you to think that 
you can think pleasant, the more imperative it is 
that you do think pleasant. 

Think pleasant now. 

Smile, you rascal, smile. Think pleasant. 

Up come the corners of your lips. King Gloom 


78 


SPUNK 


is putting on his night cap and is about to steal 
away. The morning sun of Happiness is spread¬ 
ing o’er your soul, and the beams of pleasant 
thoughts are now radiating from your face. 

* * 

It pays to look pleasant, doesn’t it? 

Think pleasant, and the world is a pleasant 
place to live in. 

Speaking about thinking pleasant at the moment 
of getting up in the morning, be sure that you 
have no alarm clock to awaken you. You should 
so train your subconscious mind that you will 
awaken slowly in the morning; then hold your 
pleasant thoughts as you come to consciousness, 
and get up in a moderate, peaceful, happy way. 

Do not jump out of bed startled, or in a hurry 
as though the house was on fire. The physio¬ 
logical, as well as the mental, effect of this method 
is most unpsychological. When you jump sud¬ 
denly from a recumbent position in which your 
blood is flowing evenly and passively, to an 
upright position, the sudden shock is not likely 
to prove beneficial to the system, to say the least. 

Have all things in order. Keep your peace 
and your poise always, and your power will 
be greater. 


Chapter XV 


IT’S BEnER TO SMILE 

H a. BALLOU, of Worcester, Mass., is 
hailed as the biggest retail paint mer- 
• chant in the United States. There is 
a reason. 

First, Ballou is a born psychologist; has been 
working at it all of his life and now has become 
an adept in understanding the underlying psycho¬ 
logical laws which give a man success, health 
and prosperity. 

The reason is, first, that Ballou believed he 
could sell paint. He had that indomitable, 
psychological faith in himself which has helped 
put him in the class of the great paint merchants 
of the country. 

But it is not always the man who has faith 
in himself who gets to the highest peak. Just 
there is where the rub comes with many a person 
who has a little smattering of psychology. A 
jackass may have great faith in himself, so that 
when he balks, or won’t go, he has such faith 
that nothing can budge him, that sometimes he 
does not get budged, but who in the world 
would want to have a jackass faith. 


79 


80 


SPUNK 


Many a person, however, gets the notion he is 
going to do something whether he pays the 
price for it or not. Therefore, be as wise in your 
psychology as a Solomon upon the judgment 
bench. First, have that great faith in yourself 
but then back it up with other virtues. 

That is what Ballou does. Ballou has had the 
faith, and second, he had the spirit of work, 
without which no man with psychology or 
without psychology is going to accomplish the 
maximum amount of achievement. Ballou had 
the faith and Ballou could work. But faith and 
works, despite the reputation this phrase has 
from the Scripture, is not always enough to make 
you the greatest paint merchant in the country. 
Along with your faith, your works, you need a 
little business judgment, and business judgment 
is always augmented by a smiling countenance. 
That is where Ballou shines—he can smile! 

But not only has Ballou the faith, the grit 
and gumption to work, the judgment, but he 
mixes all of these virtues along with his paint 
to sell it, and the smile that finally gets the 
customer’s name on the dotted line, for he sells 
paint by carload lots, and the smile that can 
keep the great force of workers loyal and true 
and at 100 per cent efficiency. 

But that is not all of the virtues, that Ballou 
has. The one other great thing which, added to 


IT’S BETTER TO SMILE 


81 


the rest, has made him so unique in the paint 
world is his spirit of giving. Ballou understands 
the psychological law of giving; he knows that 
the more you give out the more comes back, 
therefore, he Hterally covers New England with 
his gifts, he deluges the country with his gifts— 
he buys them in million lots. Think of it! No 
wonder he sells paint. He gives so much stuff 
away that he attracts to him the people who 
need paint. Any man who has faith in himself, 
the spirit of work, good business judgment, the 
virtue of a smile, and the virtue of giving so 
that he can give millions of things away, will 
sell some paint, believe me. 

Ballou gives matches, thermometers, hand 
brushes, floor brushes, floor mops, whisk brooms, 
flat iron holders, and whatnot’s, and whatnot’s, 
and whatnot’s. If you have any novelty to sell 
as a gift see Ballou in the Blue Paint Store, 
142 Main St., Worcester, Mass. __ 

Verily, it is better to smile and to give. 



Chapter XVI 


ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS A WEEK 
FOR LAUGHING 



NE of our Boston friends told us of a 


woman who had great trouble and sor^ 


row, this through her melancholy moods, 
so that she repelled all of her old-time acquaint¬ 
ances and friends until she was traveling the 
highways of life alone, deserted by all except 
one friend, who stuck closer than a brother. 
This friend told her that she was losing not only 
all the beautiful things in life, but her own soul 
as well by being so morose, so down-hearted 
and melancholy. Her friend said that she could 
win back all she had lost and more if she would 
change her attitude and smile. 

Of course it was bitter medicine for her to 
do this, but by the aid of her friend she was 
able each day to take a simple mechanical laughing 
exercise. The mechanics of the laughter by a 
little practice soon became real laughter. She 
injected this smiling and laughter into all of her 
conversation and daily life. Her friends gradu¬ 
ally, one by one, began to return, and when 


82 


ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS A WEEK 83 


they did they went away smiling and laughing, 
remembering the sunshine of her acquaintance 
and the spirit of her home. Her name as a laugher, 
a smiler, a good hostess, began to spread, and 
kept on spreading; she attracted to herself more 
friends than she had ever had before; her circle 
of friends and acquaintances so widened until 
she was even known outside of her own city as a 
person of most wonderfully attractive personality. 

Smiling had changed the woman. Instead of 
the melancholia, the grouch virus, driving people 
away from her and repelling those who really 
wanted to be her friends, the woman’s charm 
attracted people until she became famous. The 
vaudeville heard of this wonderful laughing 
woman and she was engaged at One Thousand 
Dollars a week to go into vaudeville and teach 
the people how to laugh by her genial, smiling 
spirit. 

Who says that it is not Better to Smile? Not 
the woman at one thousand per, to be sure! 
Try it and see—It Is Better to Smile. 


Chapter XVII 


OLD AND YET NEW 


“I pray thee God make me beautiful within." 

—Socrates. 

And we have thought psychology is modern— 
nay, friends, it is as old as civilizjation but 
moderns are putting a new interpretation upon 
it and like Hein2;, of ''57 varieties" fame, we are 
advertising that the thought within, makes the 
world without. 

Wise old Socrates understood. 


HOW TRUE 


A stitch in times saves your pants from 
ripping—Get busy. 


84 


Chapter XVIII 


GIVE AND GET 


A lways be willing to give a little more 
than you think you have to give. It 
may be that you will not need to give 
it, but have the willing spirit to do so. This 
is true in business, in politics, in life and in 
domestic affairs. 

Any man going in business usually has a little 
reserve fund from which he can draw to put 
more into the business, providing it is necessary— 
he is willing to give more money to put his 
business over if he must. In one of the big 
cities of the Pacific Slope, there was a man in 
the candy business. He made Twenty^two 
Thousand Dollars in eighteen months. He 
started with a capital of Three Hundred Dollars. 
After a big catastrophe it was hard to get electric 
light service, so “Mac” did the next thing. 

It was against the law to have candles in the 
store, but it was also necessary to have light to 
do business after dark. Since he was in the candy 
business, the evening was the best time of the 
day for him in his location. He had asked the 
Electric Light Company to give him service but 


85 


86 


SPUNK 


they couldn’t do it—so they said. He spent 
some eight or nine hundred dollars a month 
usually, illuminating store and signs for his 
business, but even to a good light customer like 
him, the company couldn’t give him any service— 
“They would, just as soon as it was possible.” 

He went to the office of the president of the 
Electric Company but was refused an audience, 
so he sat on the outside of the president’s door 
until the president went out for lunch. When 
the president went out he grabbed him by the 
coat tail and told him who he was, and asked 
if it were possible to get some service. The 
president replied “No! Would be glad to accom- 
modate you if we could, but it’s impossible.” 
Mac said, “Well, thank you, that is all I wanted 
to know,” and he went back to his store. 

He then went out and bought a box. Wooden 
boxes were scarce. They sold at fifteen dollars 
per. He went to the head of his shipping 
department and said, “Fill this box with one- 
pound and five-pound boxes of candy, the best 
that we have; spare nothing.” Then the box 
was delivered to the home of the president of 
the Electric Light Company. The actual cost 
of the box to “Mac,” probably was fifty dollars. 
He was giving. 

The next day while “Mac” was busily en¬ 
gaged in his own office, the president of the 


GIVE AND GET 


87 


Electric Light Company was announced. He, 
himself, came over to see Mac and said, "'We 
shall get some light up to you, we’ll make a 
special effort and you can count on having all 
the light you want.” While the rest of the 
candy manufacturers and retailers were resorting 
to all kinds of miserable light makeshifts, "Mac” 
was flashing the big electric signs, and thereby 
cleaned up Twenty^two Thousand Dollars in 
eighteen months because he knew how to give. 
He gave his customers the best quality he could 
make. He gave them the most willing service 
that could be given. He gave his life along with 
the goods, and his spirit to the purchasers, and 
in comparison to what he gave it came back 
to him. 

Giving is the great Law of Life, no matter 
where and how we are situated. 


Chapter XIX 


PSyCHOLOGY IN EVERYTHING 
ESPECIALLY YOU 

SYCHOLOGY is as old as the hills; if 



it is not as old as the eternal Rockies or 


the towering Himalayas, but it’s at least 
as old as man. Even the cave man used psy^ 
chology. When he stood at the mouth of his 
cave, alone and single-handed to defend the rights 
of his family, or to ward off the wild beasts 
who were prowling around, seeking what they 
could devour, it was the psychology which made 
our antediluvian ancestor come out victor. In 
other words, he had such confidence as did our 
stone age granddads. He was master of the 
situation. 

When you and I were tadpoles (if we ever 
were), we were then using psychology even as 
now, for the big frog in the puddle and the big 
tadpole in the pool who makes himself master of 
all and king of the whole shebang, is the ruler 
and acknowledged leader because he has such 
faith and the confidence in himself that all others 
meekly bow to his sway. 

Therefore, from the wriggling tadpole down 
the eons of centuries to our cave progenitors 


88 


PSYCHOLOGY IN EVERYTHING 


89 


through the evolution of man, to the present 
time, psychology has been the big asset in every 
successful life. 

Perhaps the pollywog doesn’t know he is a 
psychologist, probably the caveman could not 
have spelled the word and might have split his 
tongue in the effort even to get it out, neverthe¬ 
less, psychology was used. 

Now, Ty Cobb, the king of hitters in base- 
balldom, has made out a scientific schedule classi- 
fiying what wins in baseball. We have usually 
thought that pitching was the big thing and 
according to Ty Cobb we are right, but we 
thought pitching was more than half of the game, 
whereas Cobb says it’s only 40 per cent. Here’s 
the way he estimates baseball values: 


Pitching. 40% 

Batting. 20% 

Fielding. 20% 

Psychology. 20% 


Total.100% 


This Psychology Ace, Cobb, figures Psychol¬ 
ogy as ‘’‘’confidence and willingness to win a 
game.” If there’s any jinx sitting around on the 
bats of the players or in the pockets of the 
batters or in the minds of the pitchers, confidence 








90 


SPUNK 


—psychology—stabs young jinx to death. In 
fact, if you have plenty of psychology—that is, 
lots of faith and confidence and willingness to 
win the game, you don’t mind the jinx any more 
than an elephant minds a fly sleeping on his 
tough-skinned back. 

Cobb ought to know for he has been in the 
limelight, as a king bee in the baseball world 
for many a day. When you are away from 
Detroit, they say that Ty Cobb owns the city 
of Detroit. Psychology did it. Some of us thought 
that Ford owns the city, but according to en¬ 
thusiastic fans, there’s only one real man in 
Detroit and that’s Tyrus Raymond Cobb, mana¬ 
ger of the Detroit Tigers. 

If Ty had turned his energy and enthusiasm 
into editing a psychological maga 2 ;ine, he would 
have a pretty big batting average in the psycho¬ 
logical world. Ty knows that psychology is a 
big part of the baseball game. He has tried it. 
He has seen other fellows needlessly lose their 
ginger, their pep, their nerve, their faith, and 
their morale and when they have lost all of those, 
they are gone goslings. Of course, any fellow 
who loses as much as that, would be ‘’'gone” 
altogether, baseball or no baseball. 

The first essential for your success, for your 
health and for your happiness, is psychology—- 


PSYCHOLOGY IN EVERYTHING 


91 


Ty Cobb’s ''’confidence, faith and willingness” 
in winning the game of life. 

Have confidence, have faith and be willing 
to play life’s game like a man and you will win. 


Chapter XX 


THE UNUSUAL MAN 


A ll men who do things out of the ordinary 
are unusual men, and the unusual man, 
as a rule, gets plenty of unusual knocks, 
kicks, thumps, black eyes and jolts from the 
world’s mailed fist. That is the price unusual 
men pay for their unusual success. 

Hence, if you are getting plenty of knocks, 
kicks, thumps, black eyes and jolts, it probably 
is due to the fact that you are an unusual man 
and the difference between you now, and the 
unusual success you will achieve tomorrow, is 
only the element of time, plus the will to hang 
on and take a few more thumps, whacks, brow*' 
beatings, lashings and black eyes from the world’s 
mailed fist. 

The one thing that may keep you from become 
ing an unusually successful man, is the fact that, 
when you have been browbeaten, lashed and 
tongue-whipped you give up just a day too soon. 

Ask the unusual men who have made unusual 
success what would have happened if they had 


92 


THE UNUSUAL MAN 


93 


given up at different times when they felt as 
though they had taken about all they could 
stand. If they had given up when their minds 
were tortured by hostile criticism, their backs 
beaten by failures and their eyes blackened by 
mistakes, ask them if they would be successful 
today. 

But you do not have to ask them, I can answer 
your question for them. 

No! 

They are what they are—successes—because 
they paid the price exacted of the unusual man. 
They hung on when others said, ''It cannot 
be done.” 

All unusual men get unusual beatings some- 
time or other. In our present state of conscious¬ 
ness it is the way of life. So, if you are having 
your beatings now you ought to rejoice and sing 
praises and thank the good Lord that you are 
putting these beatings behind you, and you will 
therefore not have to get so many tomorrow. 
Beatings are one of the penalties of success. 

When you see the successful man ride by in 
his limousine, board his yacht or take a hop in 
his airplane it looks so easy—as if fate had 
strewn his pathway with roses and given him 
a feather tick on top of an Ostermoor. But know 
ye, when you see the successful man enjoying 




94 


SPUNK 


the fruit of his labors, that he did toil, he did 
have his beatings, he did hang on until the storm 
clouds had passed. 

So, thank God that you are an unusual man, 
and hang on a little longer. The very thing that 
may make you great and make it possible to 
achieve the success you want is your unusualness. 

Do the thing that your heart prompts you to 
do, that the spirit within dictates and you will 
win. It may be a roundabout way you may have 
to travel, a stony path you may have to climb. 
You may have to cultivate the spirit of a Her¬ 
cules—but whatever you want to do you can 
do it, if you will do it with all your might and 
never say die. 

So, when your friends and relatives think you 
are unusual, and you do not do things as someone 
else does, and when you are pronounced odd, 
and peculiar, then grit your teeth, clench your 
fist, smile under your belt and thank God that 
you are an unusual man and that'you are after 
unusual success. 

All unusual men have their days of darkness, 
their hours of strife and their moments of hesi¬ 
tation—their gardens of Gethsemane. 

Thank God for what you have, plod on, look 
up and smile, until you, the unusual man of 
today, scorned by friends and neighbors who do 


THE UNUSUAL MAN 


95 


not understand the unusual path you may be 
treading, in an unusual way, will one of these 
days turn out the kind of man people will be 
proud to know, proud to cultivate, proud to 
call friend. 


Chapter XXI 


KEEP EVERLASTINGLY AT IT— 
IT PAYS 


ID I tell you about an insurance salesman 



who was turned down fourteen times 


^ in Sioux City? Finally, he heard me talk 
about the value of courage and the necessity of 
going back to see a prospect again. He started 
out the next day and sold one man, whom he 
had given up, and made $260 in commissions. 
Then he went back to see another man who had 
refused to buy. This man said, ‘Took here, I 
have told you ‘No’ fourteen times, haven’t I?” 
The salesman replied, “Yes, I know you have; 
but the next time you are going to say ‘Yes.’ ” 
This salesman had faith, courage and conviction 
and not a single doubt or negative thought. 

Just as he said this, the daughter of the man 
to whom he was trying to sell came in. The 
salesman knew he had something the man should 
have. Turning to the daughter, the father said, 
“What do you think of this?” “I think you 
ought to take it,” answered the daughter. 
“Didn’t I tell you the fifteenth time you would 


96 


KEEP EVERLASTINGLY AT IT 


97 


take it?’’ said the salesman. The man signed the 
application blank and by so doing permitted the 
agent to earn a big commission. 

Build up confidence and emotional power; 
then have them balanced by peace and poise and 
equilibrium. You are going to be worth more to 
yourself next year than now, and five years from 
now you will still be worth more to your God 
all the rest of your life. 


Chapter XXII 


WHERE DOES ABUNDANCE COME FROM? 

T his is a true story one of my class mem- 
bers told in Indianapolis. The teacher 
is still living. 

It was during vacation time, and the teacher’s 
funds were completely exhausted. She was un¬ 
consciously concentrating, turning over and over 
in her mind, “Where will I get twenty dollars?” 
She boarded a street car in Indianapolis, sat 
down, and was unconsciously running through 
her mind, “Where can I get twenty dollars?” A 
strange woman took the seat next to her, opened 
her pocketbook, took out a twenty-dollar gold 
piece and said to the school teacher at her side, 
“This looks beautiful, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” re¬ 
plied the teacher who sorely needed the twenty 
dollars, “that does look beautiful, indeed.” The 
stranger replied, “Well, it is yours.” The teacher 
gasped and was unable to express herself. She 
needed twenty dollars, and lo! here it was put 
into her hands. She refused to take it, but the 
etrange woman said, “It is yours—I want you 
to tave it.” When the teacher went home and 


98 


ABUNDANCE — COMES FROM WHERE? 99 

explained what had happened, she was advised 
to find the strange woman and return the money, 
but someone else who understood psychology 
said, ''No, the person who gave it to you did 
so out of the goodness of her heart and she 
wanted you to have it. It belongs to you; 
therefore, keep it." 


Chapter XXIII 


WHICH WAY DO YOU THINK? 

D O NOT think on what has been, but on 
what will be. You will never be a 
has-beener if you think you are an is-goer. 
If you believe you are going forward, someone 
will give you a push upward. 

If you think you may slip backward, somebody 
may throw a banana peeling to help you slide. 
Which way do you think? 


'lOO 


Chapter XXIV 


HOW TO NAIL "FEAR" ON THE HEAD 

T he common saying, “A man can make a 
mountain out of a molehill,” contains more 
truth than poetry. 

When your imagination takes wings and fancy 
runs wild, we can picture and anticipate more 
troubles in five minutes than we could actually 
bring upon ourselves in a lifetime. 

Imagination uncontrolled: Imagination can do 
almost anything: It can give us the right mental 
attitude for success, health, and happiness; but 
uncontrolled can build structures of doubt, sor- 
row, ilbhealth, and a miscellany of troubles, which 
with slight effort can bring tumbling down upon 
our heads these horrible structures we have 
created in our minds. 

When I was a little fellow and living in the 
foothills of the stony country amid the Allegheny 
Mountains, some of my elders thought it very 
smart on cold, dark winter nights to send me 
upstairs on an errand to a room blacker than 


101 


102 


SPUNK 


pitch, and then stand at the stairway below and 
thump on tin pans and utter unearthly yells to 
scare me. Then, of course, I would come tumbling 
down the steps like a puff-ball. I was not six years 
of age. Naturally I believed many of the goblin 
stories that had been told me, and when such a 
performance was enacted I did not take time to 
count the steps or see where I stepped to make 
my exit from the goblins ready to sei 2 ie me. I 
came down any way I could get down, and the 
faster the better. The grown-ups thought they 
were playing a very clever trick. 

But there were really no goblins up there. 
There was nothing whatever in the dark for me 
to be afraid of; albeit with the proper stage 
setting of goblin stories told me prior to my 
going upstairs into the dark, with the right 
contraptions below, and the yells of my tor¬ 
mentors, I imagined things that were not there. 

Later in life, when my creditors were pushing 
me, and when trying to make my way through 
college, I was frantically endeavoring to make 
ends meet, many days going with only one 
meal and some days with nothing at all to eat, 
I imagined very strange things. I saw myself 
thrown into prison for debt; I saw myself lying 
in a coffin dead from starvation; I saw the future 
so black that I prayed night after night (in those 
old days when I believed in that kind of a 


HOW TO NAIL “FEAR” ON THE HEAD 103 


prayer) that I might die before I should awake. 

As a matter of fact when I did not have 
three meals a day it was really good for me, 
but I did not know it in those days. Most of 
the humans living in the rich United States of 
America, where ninety per cent of the population 
overeats, would be much better if occasionally 
they did eat but one meal a day; but I did not 
know that. I had been raised to think it necessary 
to put away three squares anyhow, and if I 
missed a meal it was the first button pushed to 
call the undertaker. 

Imagination did it—that's all. 

Most of the troubles of man are imagined. 
Our worst troubles never come. 


TROUBLES THAT NEVER CAME 

The bridges that I’ve often crossed 
Before they came in sight, 

Have been of many, many kinds; 

Been grey, or black, or white. 

I fancied many brutish ones. 

And many could not name; 

I’ve had my many troubles, but 
The worst ones never came! 

When squirrels get their nuts for food. 
They gather for a year, 


104 


SPUNK 


And do not worry ’bout the next, 

For that they have no fear. 

But man is not content today, 

He lives with troubled aim; 

A'thinking ’bout the troubles past. 

And those which never came. 

Some people build their mounts of care 
Of many sorts and kind. 

Which like the bridges that they build. 

Are mostly in their mind. 

Though sun’s abla2;e and sky is clear. 

They think of lightning’s flame; 

They had their many troubles, but 
The worst ones never came! 

Now God is in the universe 
The birds and squirrels know. 

They worry not, nor do they fret. 

For what we reap we sow. 

If we sow deeds they’ll bear their fruit. 

For God will hear our claim. 

If we trust Him then we can say, 

The^worst ones never came! 

—David V. Bush. 

Whether a man’s troubles are real or imaginary 
there is one way to meet them and rise superior 
to them. There is one easy, sure way to knock 
every fear in the head and throw it out of the 
mental picture gallery instantly. It is so simple 
that you will wonder why the human family 


HOW TO NAIL “FEAR” ON THE HEAD 105 


has not been taught it from infancy. This is 
the procedure: 

It is a welhknown anatomical fact that many 
pains both real and imaginary can be overcome 
by using the very muscles where the pain is 
lodged. This method of attack is equally salutary 
in overcoming mental gloom and depression of 
spirit; it can be employed to overcome your 
fears and your troubles. Suppose you owe money 
and know when you go home tonight there will 
be a creditor sitting on your front doorstep and 
one at the gateway and a third at the back door 
and a fourth in the parlor. Suppose you are 
threatened with bankruptcy or ejection from your 
home. Suppose your wife has run away with 
another man, or business is not so good. Suppose 
you are out of employment and you do not know 
where to look for another job. Suppose you 
think the world has gone to pot and you face 
complete ruin. That is precisely the time to 
plunge right into your troubles, and say: “Well, 
what of it, anyhow?” Repeat that thought a 
number of times, and I will guarantee that most if 
not all of your troubles, whether they be real 
or imaginary, will vanish away. “Well, what 
of it, anyhow?” “Well, what of it, anyhow?” 


Chapter XXV 


HOW TO LICK FEAR 

'‘^Always do what you are afraid to do.”—E merson. 

M ajor LYNN ADAMS, head of the 

Pennsylvania Constabulary — consid^ 
ered as good an organi 2 ;ation as the 
Canadian Mounted Police—entered the first 
World War as a private and came out a major. 
When the Armistice was granted, he was Provost 
Marshal of Paris. That is a record to write home 
about in the last world conflict; for in that war, 
without West Point training, a private had little 
chance for such spectacular promotion. After he 
was mustered out of the Army, he joined the 
Pennsylvania State Police as a private, and within 
one year was at the head of the organi 2 ;ation. 

Fear is not in his vocabulary. A few years 
ago when he told me the following story, he had, 
alone, taken 51 blackTianders prisoners. One 
time when running down a desperado, he was 
shot above the heart. He stuffed his handkerchief 
in the wound and made his way to a doctor’s 
office. The doctor was not there. When he took 


106 


HOW TO LICK FEAR 


107 


the handkerchief out of the hole in his breast, 
the blood shot upward like a crimson geyser; the 
nurse fainted. He had to plug his wound again 
and then revive the nurse. 

Imagine such a fearless man hearing his children 
talk about being afraid in the dark. They had 
heard other children talk about the boogey man, 
and the goblins that lurk behind corners and 
come out of the nowhere in the dark. Major 
Adams sat down with his children and explained 
that there is nothing to fear in the dark. “In 
fact,” said he, “the dark is your friend. It hides 
you from your enemies. They cannot see you 
in the dark. Instead of being man’s enemy 
darkness is his friend. The next time you have 
any dread of going out when it is dark, just 
remember that you are safer in the darkness 
than in the light. In short, don’t be afraid of 
the dark. Go right into it and you will be 
surprised how quickly your fears disappear.” 

There, in short, is the essence of modern 
psychology’s teaching about overcoming fear. Go 
right after the thing you fear and it will, like 
the mist before the sun, dissolve and disappear. 
Face your fear and there is no fear. For most 
people it is as simple as that. 

Then again, we are taught to sit down and 
think about that of which we are afraid; to ask 
ourselves: Why am I afraid of this person? Of 


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open spaces, or closed spaces? Why am I afraid 
to go into a social gathering? Or why am I 
afraid of this job? Or whatever the fear is. 

The average person who is afraid invariably 
does the wrong thing. He tries to forget what 
he is afraid of, or tries to escape from his fear. 
That is the best way to keep the fear that 
haunts us. 

The theory which has proved to be very 
practical for thousands of people, is to think 
about the fear; to ask what has caused it, and, 
by thus facing it, to bring it up from the sub' 
conscious depths to the conscious mind; from the 
cellar of darkness to the top story of light, there 
it disappears; disappears automatically. 

The psychological explanation of this method 
is easily understood. If you try to forget your 
fear, you keep it in the subconscious mind; and 
it will remain there to plague you. But when 
you drag it out to the light, when you think 
about it, when you recall the reasons you are 
afraid of anybody, anything, the fear is brought 
up from the subconscious mind to the conscious 
mind; and then it leaves the lower substrata of 
mind—where fears tend to remain—and is gone. 

To know why we fear and to face our fear 
is to lick our fear. Charge like a wounded lion 
at the thing you fear and there will be no fear. 


HOW TO LICK FEAR 


109 


Each time we face fear and lick it—it will be 
easier to face the next and lick that. Think and 
act, and you have the last word from modern 
psychology as to how to overcome fear. 

A young aviator is taught that if he crashes, 
he must go up again, right away, before he has 
time to dwell upon the failure, and the danger 
of what might be if he crashes again. By im¬ 
mediately facing the danger before it can become 
imbedded in the subconscious mind, which would 
weaken his will and nerve and probably ruin 
his future as a pilot—he is applying the modern 
method of licking fear—nailing it on the head, 
squelching it a-borning. This fledgling aviator 
goes right up again and by so doing makes a 
successful flight, robs future flying of its dread 
and fear. 

Affirmation, as taught by the metaphysician 
is another splendid method. I have taught it to 
thousands and thousands. The subconscious mind 
cannot hold two thoughts at one and the same 
time; just as we cannot cry and whistle at the 
same time; we cannot be fearful and courageous 
at the same time. The subconscious mind keeps 
within its depths the thought which has been 
passed onto it by the conscious mind with the 
most emotion. If we will hold in our mind 
before going to sleep at night (that is the best 
time) a strong affirmation of courage or a religious 


110 


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thought; such as, “If God is for us who can be 
against us,” that continued affirmation will in 
time become a part of our mentation, and will 
crowd out the fear thought. When this method 
is followed, keep in mind Emerson’s wise injunc- 
tion, “A man is what he thinks about all day 
long.” Hence the more often and the more 
intensely we repeat our affirmation the better it 
is and the quicker we may hope to have results. 
Hold courageous thoughts in the mind and thus 
crowd out fear thoughts. Thousands and thou¬ 
sands have proved this to be effective. 

Our nightmiares and untoward dreams are all 
a re-living in the subconscious mind of some 
experience we have had in life. To overcome 
these mental disturbances is to charge the sub¬ 
conscious mind with a strong courageous thought 
many times each day and with earnestness. Take 
this thought as an example: 

Darkness and doubt are being dis¬ 
pelled and I am going on to better 
things because all things are in divine 
order for me and mine. 

George Eastman, the famous Kodak man, who 
gave away more than a hundred million dollars, 
committed suicide by putting a pistol to his head 
and pulling the trigger. B. C. Forbes, commenting 
on this strange suicide, said he thought it was 


HOW TO LICK FEAR 


111 


the result of the bad, poverty-stricken dreams 
Mr. Eastman dreamed so often. He was past 
seventy. These poverty-stricken nightmares, 
which had continued a lifetime were more than 
he could endure, as age weakened his resistance. 
He hacked and hammered his way out of the 
jungle of dire poverty, which had been his birth¬ 
right, and wretchedness, his early lot, with such 
intense emotion that, long after he became a 
multi-millionaire, the old subconscious poverty- 
fear thoughts continued. 

Remember the first step will be the hardest. 
But each effort will become easier. Face your 
troubles; face your defeat; face your situation; 
face your fear, and fear will slink away like a 
sneaking leopard to its den. 

Never run away from a dangerous situation 
but face it! You will gain new strength with 
each defiance of fear. 

Sometimes our first attempt turns out badly 
as in the case of an actor struck with stage fright. 
Marie Dressier was so scared at her first appear¬ 
ance she could not move. Her manager gave her 
a push, and away she went sprawling onto the 
stage. It created a great laugh and that entrance 
was left in the show. By the time she picked 
herself up, she had lost her stage fright and 
proceeded as though nothing had happened. 


112 


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If at first you don’t succeed try, try again. 

Says one professor of psychology, ‘'Throttled 
fear makes a man stupid and clumsy in the face 
of danger. Faced fear makes a man apt in escaping 
danger.” Deny that there is anything in the 
universe that can harm you. Affirm that God 
protects you. 

Face fear and conquer. Look your fear squarely 
in the eye and be victorious. Go after the next 
dreadful situation head on and see if you do 
not lick fear. 

Emerson once wrote of Eliziabeth Hoar— 
“Eli 2 ;abeth consecrates; I have no friend whom 
I more wish to be immortal than she.” 

“When I was a little girl,” wrote Eli 2 ;abeth 
Hoar, “I suffered agonies of terror at the barking 
of a dog, yet was ashamed to run away and avoid 
passing him. It suddenly occurred to my thought, 
what is it to fear? That the dog should bite 
me—should inflict just so much pain as a dog’s 
bite can upon me. Well I can bear so much pain 
bravely, I am sure, so I will take no further 
thought about it, but walk boldly on, and be 
ready for the bite when it comes—and my 
fear was gone. 

“The story sounds trifling, but it is not so in 
my life, because the philosophy I learned from 
that moment’s thought has been of so much use 


HOW TO LICK FEAR 


113 


to me since, in carrying me straight up to the 
ghosts of possible evils, showing their real power.” 

Plato said that in Greece, “the eldest son was 
put under the tutelage of four masters: the first 
taught him religion; the second, to be upright 
and true; the third, to become master of his 
own desires; and the fourth, to fear nothing.” 

Nothing is wasted in such large quantities as 
fear. Fear dethrones reason, prevents good judg¬ 
ment and ruins the future. Face your fear and live! 


Chapter XXVI 


OTHER TESTED METHODS 


L owell FILMORE, Editor of Unity, has 
well said: 

‘‘Remember that fear is afraid of itself. 
“Remember to begin casting out fear by doing 
the things you fear to do. Think fearlessly. 

“Deny that there is anything in the Universe 
that can harm you. Affirm that God protects you. 

“Remember fear stays with you no longer than 
it is made welcome.” 


Goethe, whom some consider the greatest mind 
since Shakespeare, has this to say: 

“Napoleon visited those sick of the plague 
in order to prove that the man who could 
vanquish fear could vanquish the plague also: 
and he was right. It is incredible what force 
the will has in such cases; it penetrates the body, 
and puts it into a state of activity, which repels 
all hurtful influences; whilst fear invites them.” 

Religious faith is a most powerful weapon 
against fear, when it is properly applied; so when 
the world seems dark and you are afraid, put 
your trust in God’s loving protection, and smile. 


114 


OTHER TESTED METHODS 


115 


Remember that we are apt to fear the things 
we do not understand. Fear is the result of 
ignorance. Fear shackles the mind, knowledge 
breaks the chain, and action clears the way. 
Remember that perfect love and wisdom cast 
out fear. 

Following the principle that the subconscious 
mind cannot entertain two different thoughts at 
one and the same time, one of our psychological 
instructors has suggested the following method 
to help cleanse the subconscious mind of fear: 

"‘Crowd out the fear by substituting for it a 
creative thought. Say to yourself, "I am trying 
to do good, to be helpful, to be encouraging. No 
penalty can be exacted for doing good. Nothing 
can really hurt me.’ 

“This constructive attitude involves, first of 
all, confidence in the universe. Fear turns into 
faith when we reali2ie that a moral law governs 
our world, operating for the highest good of those 
who put themselves in harmony with it.” 

There is another kind of fear which can be 
licked. C. W. Leadbetter states it in the 
following manner: 

“Perhaps the greatest and most disastrous of 
all the taboos that we erect for ourselves is the 
fear of what our neighbors will say. There are 
many men and women who appear to live only 
in order that they may be talked about; at least. 


116 


SPUNK 


that is what one must infer from the way in 
which they bring everything to this as to a touch' 
stone. The one and only criterion which they 
apply with regard to any course of action is the 
impression which it will make upon their neigh' 
bors. They do not ask themselves, 'Is it right 
or wrong for me to do this?’ But 'what will 
Mrs. Jones say if I do this?’ 

"This is perhaps the most terrible form of 
slavery under which a human being can suffer, 
and yet to obtain freedom from it it is only 
necessary to assert it. What other people say 
can make in us only such difference as we our' 
selves choose to allow it to make. We have but 
to realize within ourselves that it does not in 
the least matter what anybody says, and at once 
we are perfectly free.” 

The person who knows how to face his fear 
has the best chance of being happy, for fear 
ruins happiness. 

"We cannot rid our children of fears by teach' 
ing them that they should not be afraid,” says 
The Mother^s Magazine, "but only by helping 
them to understand rather than to fear; by 
teaching them that these things in their pathways 
which have seemed to them ogres, after all, on 
closer view and foreknowledge, are friendly things 
designed to help us and guide us and to keep 
us from losing our way in the dark. 


OTHER TESTED METHODS 


117 


''It must not be forgotten that if we are to 
help our children to get rid of fears by this 
method, we ourselves must learn to do away with 
our own fears, and not by supreme effort of faith 
nor by a strong effort of the will, but rather by 
a persistent effort of the intelligence. Not so 
much by admonition, but again and again by 
example we must teach the child to go up to 
whatever frightens him, not in an effort to be 
brave, but in an effort to know. 

"To cultivate in him the love of questioning 
and examining and understanding, this is the 
only sound and lasting way of getting rid of 
the child’s fears.” 

Miss Joan Wing is an expert in teaching 
courtesy. While she was working with a certain 
restaurant, in teaching employees the value of 
courtesy, the owner spoke about one of his 
cashiers. She was his most eiEcient cashier, but 
she made the most trouble. She was sullen, never 
looked the customers in the eyes, and never smiled. 

One glance at the efficient, yet troublesome 
employee told Miss Wing why she never looked 
up, why she never smiled. Her face was covered 
with the scars of smallpox. 

So the courtesy expert began to win the 
confidence of the pock-marked woman; and, after 
spending a few days at her side from time to 
time and becoming friendly, she said one day to 


118 


SPUNK 


the poor creature who was afraid to look at the 
customers, ''You know, your eyes are beautiful; 
why don’t you ever look up and smile at people?” 

The shy and embarrassed cashier blushed and 
said, "You can see—my face.” 

"Yes,” Joan Wing replied, "I see your skin. 
But do you know why I noticed it? Only because 
you never looked at anyone directly. I’m sure 
if you used your eyes no one would think of 
your skin, and you would forget it yourself.” 

Within two weeks that poor, frightened woman 
was a new person, so much so that the employer 
wanted to know what the expert in courtesy 
had done to perform such a miracle. Said he, 
"Why she is positively charming, actually cheer" 
ful, making friends among customers and em" 
ployees alike. And she is so much better looking.” 

Everyone some time or other has obstacles, 
handicaps, difficulties, problems and embarrassing 
moments to face. We never gain anything by 
trying to run away from them or ourselves. The 
more we try to slide away, or slip from under 
life’s burdens the harder they are to bear. 

Everyone’s life some time or other, is shot 
through with thunderbolts of calamity or cloud" 
bursts of disaster. It is better to be taught the 
real facts of life: that the stark realities teach us 
there is nothing worth while that comes easily, 
that the bitter with the sweet is better than 


OTHER TESTED METHODS 


119 


molasses all of the time, and that to expect to 
sail through life on a wishing carpet is a wild 
chase after the rainbow. But whatever does 
come, if faced with a calm, confident spirit, and 
a hopeful, courageous attitude, can always be 
thus met, and we come out the victors. 

Modern science instructs us that there is a 
direct connection between fear and fatigue. So 
to be mentally at par, one must be physically at 
par; and any violation of this rule may make us 
cowards and cause us to wonder what has 
happened. 

Take the case of a fireman in New York City. 
He had already established a record of daring 
and courage and had fought innumerable bla 2 ;es 
and did it well; yet all of a sudden he was sei 2 ;ed 
with hysterical terror when called upon to do 
his duty. 

The Chief thought such a heroic and strenuous 
fire fighter must have been struck by some falling 
timber and had him removed to a hospital. The 
man had received no bodily injury at all. But 
his breakdown was the result of a factor which 
was just as physical in nature. He was a victim 
of fatigue. 

After sitting up a day and a night with his 
sick wife, without rest or sleep, he had been on 
continuous duty fighting fire for 36 hours. Sheer 
weariness had worn him out. 


120 


SPUNK 


Three days of complete rest restored both his 
health and his bravery. 

Trying to hide our fears is as ineffectual as 
trying to run away from them or to brush them 
off with a ‘Torget it.” 

“Timidity is a disease of the mind,” says the 
master mind, Samuel Johnson, “obstinate and 
fatal; for a man once persuaded that any inpedi" 
ment is insuperable has given it, with respect to 
himself, that strength and weight which it had 
not before.” 

“O friend, never strike sail to fear,” cries 
Emerson, “but come into port greatly, or sail 
with God the seas.” 

But modern psychologists know that to say to 
a person beset with fears, “Forget them,” or 
“Don’t be so scared,” or “Don’t be a molly¬ 
coddle,” is giving free advice which can not be 
followed. You cannot overcome fear by trying 
to forget fear. The more you try to forget fear, 
the worse fear will be. Any professor of 
psychology knows that. 

No, we cannot get rid of fear that way. The 
deepening clouds of doubt and fear settle down 
blacker and surer when we try to forget them. 
Minds that leak fear like a sieve must be mended 
in a more positive way. 

When fear bulges the eyes like hard-boiled 
^ggs, we need something more than “Forget it,” 


OTHER TESTED METHODS 


121 


with which to conquer. We must face it. 

Or, if you dig in and do some work, that often 
helps. Bury yourself in work. Lose your life 
in some helpful service, and by so doing you 
may find you have gained it and have dropped 
fear in the process. 

Keep busy—keep active—have a job to do 
and do it. 

The modern psychiatrist throws another light 
on this dark and one-time baffling subject of fear 
that often frightens man so he talks as though he 
had a cracked tonsil, namely, do not try to keep 
your fears to yourself. By so doing, like a fester 
that swells and becomes more ugly and painful, 
the repression makes a cancerous growth in the 
mind, that develops and spreads until ambition 
is sapped, initiative choked, courage submerged, 
happiness ruined and success frustrated. 

It is better for mental health and for one’s 
happiness and success, to confess our fears to 
others. This method of psychiatry is now an 
established fact in scientific circles. So do not 
try to hide your fears, but drag them out into 
the open, and as sunlight drives out the moths, 
the light of mental airing chases away the 
shadows of fears. 

Then, a sense of humor, or should I say, a 
sense of proportion helps greatly. This psycho¬ 
logical treatment of fear is what saved London in 


122 


SPUNK 


her perilous days of Hitler’s blit2:es in 1939 when 
methodically on the stroke of the hour, three and 
four times a day, his superior air force made sky 
voyages over the English Channel, leaving behind 
black walls of smoke, and volcanicdike fires that 
pockmarked the bombshelled cities, left its grue^ 
some trail of the dead and mangled, but did not 
break the Britishers’ spirit. 

England made light of the Fuehrer’s living 
threats, affirmed her power to win, and laughed 
at her tragic ordeals. Laughter always dispels fear. 

If fear goose-fleshes your skin, analy 2 ;e it, tell 
it to others, wade right into it, ridicule it, face it, 
laugh at it, claim your God-given One-ness with 
GOOD, work with all your might, affirm your 
triumph over doubt and your victory over fear; 
and fear will be a thing of the past. 

Remember the fear habit is as old as man in the 
racial consciousness, and as old as you in your 
personal experience; so, if you slip a time or two, 
let that not discourage you, but remember the 
Voice of Courage,, your inner better self, can 
bid you try, try again; and YOU CAN, until 
you win! 


Chapter XXVII 


DEVILS ARE WHERE WE FIND THEM 


Where are the devils? We often'will find 
We conjure them up in the depths of our mind. 


David V. Bush. 



TRAVELER in India described the 


wonders of the heavens and the glories 


of the sky, the restfulness of the silence 


and the depth of sweet sleep, in that far away 
land of jungle stillness. 

While he was floating downstream, sleeping 
“as calm and blissful a sleep as these renity of 
stars ever gave to mortal man,’' all of a sudden 
he was awakened by yells and screeches, by 
hollerings and screams that blasted his eardrums 
like bomb shells, jammed and exploding in the 
crater of an active volcano. 

Where the stars had been shining so gorgeously, 
all around was as black as the inside of a stovepipe 
buried in the subterranean chambers of Man- 
mouth Cave. 

They were passing through a tunnel. The 


123 


124 


SPUNK 


native crew on his boat was piercing the darkness 
with their shrieks and bombarding the sides of 
the tunnel with their thunderous ravings, in order 
to drive the devils away. Pandemonium broke 
loose. They did this to save themselves from 
whatever they thought devils could do to them 
in the interior darkness of the earth. 

They believe also that, where they had a better 
chance to defend themselves, devils surround 
them in daylight, but not having cat’s eyes to 
see devils in the pitch darkness, they resorted to 
noise-making weapons, which their forefathers 
had handed down for centuries, to keep the imps 
at arm’s length or to frighten them away. 

Not many moderns in America go witch 
hunting any more, but plenty of us have, through 
fear, worry and shyness, conjured up numerous 
devils, to beset our road, ay, to rob us of our 
happiness and sink us into the rut of despair. 

Borrowed troubles, magnified worries—these 
are modern devils which camp on nearly every¬ 
one’s trail, and block many a successful highway. 

What is there, to fear? Nothing but fear, but 
thousands of us are haunted day and night by 
that particular devil of the imagination. 

Devils of worries, fear and disappointments are 
barriers, which only mind, not noise, can over¬ 
come. Devils, like our troubles, are mostly in 
our minds. 


DEVILS ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM 125 


If we mix up a witches’ brew of fear and worry, 
we shall sip a bitter cup of unhappiness indeed. 

WINANT AND LOSS 

Loss may become such a devil; it could drive 
us to suicide today as it has done to hundreds in 
the past. And yet loss may be a blessing in 
disguise or an incentive to drive us to greater 
accomplishments. Whatever effect it has on us 
depends upon the state of the mind. 

Loss may be as vinegar to the taste and worm- 
wood to the soul. 

Or loss may help us to make friends and lay the 
foundation for success or riches. That intangible 
quality, not seen with the eyes-spirit makes your 
world or makes my world, irrespective of loss, 
disappointment, sorrow or grief, hence the neces- 
sity of making the day right by thinking right. 

John Winant, Ambassador to the Court of 
St. James, has what some people think is a strange 
attitude toward money—his money, not other 
people’s money, and yet for peace of mind, I 
wonder if he has not a splendid idea on destroying 
evil seed of fear by not allowing it to sprout 
and grow. 

While he was Governor, he was summoned 
one day to a very important conference. On his 
way he met a woman whose body was “fatigued 


126 


SPUNK 


to the point of exhaustion,” and her heart almost 
broken by despair, the victim of compound misery. 

He had known her in earlier days. When he 
was asked to help, he ran his hand into his 
pocket, pulled out a handful of bills, thrust them 
into her trembling fingers, and made his way to 
the railroad station. When he got there he had 
not kept for himself enough money to buy a 
short-fare ticket. 

He has lost money time and time again in 
investments, down to his last shirt, so it has 
been said. His friends say his losses have been 
the result of a mixed hope to make money and 
to help develop New Hampshire industry; or 
to give people jobs. 

When a New Hampshire road construction 
company, in which he was a heavy investor, 
went broke, Winant said to his partner: “Any¬ 
way, we built swell roads, didn’t we?” 

Arthur Brisbane well said: “Everything in 
life depends on how we feel, not merely upon 
what we have.” 


DEVILS ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM 127 

“KNOW you ARE ALL RIGHT** 


If we \eep our faith, though our goaVs out 
of sight 

Things will wor\ well, for with God they're 
all right. 


David V. Bush. 



ACK MELVILLE tells us that at the tender 


age of 14 he went deer hunting and was 


^ caught in a side winder of a bli 2 i 2 ard. He 
began running as fast as he could in what he 
thought was the direction of his home. Just as 
he was almost winded he found a trail going in 
his direction. Fine, thought the boy, someone 
going his way. No, on second thought, this 
could not be. He had travelled around in a circle 
and had come back where he started. 

Overcome by exhaustion and the thought of 
his terrible predicament, he sank into the snow, 
panting for breath. Darkness was less than an 
hour away and snow was still falling in a dense 
forest of spruce, stretching one hundred miles 
in one direction and 50 in the other. 

In fear and panic, he could have wandered 
on for weeks without finding his way out, but, 
as he lay there cushioned on the soft down of 
the friendly snow, he remembered the teaching 
of his father, who had often said, ''Son, if you 


128 


SPUNK 


ever get lost the first thing to do is to sit down 
quietly and l^ow you are dll right. Then think 
over where your back trail is, in what direction 
you were headed when you started out and 
what you did as you went along. If it all comes 
back to you, start out quietly and back track. 
If it doesn’t seem clear, then stay where you 
are and build a fire with lots of smoke. You will 
be found in plenty of time. Above all, remember 
there is nothing to fear.” 

The haunting shadow of fear can stymie the 
mind, paraly 2 ie the feet and stun the senses, until 
confusion steals away reason, and bewilderment 
brings ruin. 

So, relying upon the wisdom of his father, he 
built a large fire, rested against a tree, and although 
the snow fell all night, had what under the 
circumstances could be called a good night’s 
sleep. When day dawned, refreshed in mind 
and body, and spirit, with mind under control, 
it was an easy matter for him to find his direction, 
as any lad of the forest can do, and thus made 
his way out .with little trouble. 

That phrase his father taught, '‘Above all, 
remember there is nothing to fear; sit down 
quietly and know that you are all right,” is 
well worth tucking away in the pigeon hole of 
memory. It can be used by old and young 
alike—"Know that you are all right.” 


DEVILS ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM 129 


When one is so scared that the first man he 
meets appears to have eyes like head lights and 
teeth like elephants’ tusks, that is the time to 
relax, sit down, take a deep breath, count up 
to a hundred, and repeat, 'There is nothing to 
fear. I am all right. God’s in His Heaven, all’s 
right wi h the world.” Such a statement ought to 
act as a soothing balm to the nerves, for anyone 
lost in the tall trees of doubt, the morasses of 
loss, or the tall timber of disappointment. 


DEMONS ARE BORN IN THE MIND 

David V. Bush 

The fear of devils, or witches, of ghouls. 

Has long been the plague of us humans; 

They're pictured with pitchforks, or threedegged stools 
Weapons of man or a wom*an’s; 

Now by close study, be sure you will find 
Those devils are bom in the womb of the mind. 

The m-an in his cave before weapons were known 
Rolled 'fore its entrance a slab stone 
To keep iii the dark, away from his home 
The lurking, fierce fiends in the drab zone; 

He believed, as the Hindus, with all of his heart 
'Twas ill to go out after night in the dark. 

Though banded together in tribe or in clan. 

Where one’s strength with another’s was blended. 
They still felt a^tremble, to the very last man 
When the curtains of darkness descended; 

When man made a study of this dem.onology 
He was helped very little by his father’s theology. 

Then came the Master, in the course of good time. 
Teaching the love of the Father 
And sent out the demons of men into swine 
That ran down the hillside, and farther, 

Until they were drowned in small Galilee, 

In waters that ran far away to the sea. 

Since then we have studied the demons, and find 
They’re buried way deep in the pit of the mind. 

Like all other things that are good, or are ill 
They’re conjured or stayed, by an act of the will. 


130 


Chapter XXVIII 


FEAR CAN HOLD US BACK 

Tiever are things as bad as they appear. 
But, always made worse by worry and fear. 

David V. Bush. 

S UCH has been the improvement in treating 
insane patients that it is almost impossible 
for this generation to believe how they 
were treated a century ago. 

Violent ones were sometimes left in dark, 
damp, cold dungeons for years to slowly waste 
and rot away—rot in mind and rot in body. 
They were put in padded cells and whipped to 
within an inch of their lives; they were manacled; 
they were chained to walls in large wards, where 
do 2 ;ens lived and saw the mad ravings of others 
from which they were never freed; incarcerated. 
Such treatment was enough to drive them mad 
if they were not. Such repression and inhuman 
treatment made mild cases violent and the worst 
ones dangerous for the attendants. 

At the turn of the century, so long does 
it take for a new idea to be accepted by science. 


131 


132 


SPUNK 


the systematic abuse of the insane included 
knocking them down with bare fists or wet 
towels, strapping them to beds, overloading their 
blood stream with narcotics, binding them in 
sheets and putting them in straight jackets. 

The man responsible for changing such insane 
treatment of the insane, was a man of small 
stature, a little fellow once so timid he refused 
the appointment to become the physician to 
Napoleon Bonaparte, himself a small man, for 
fear he could not give orders to the Emperor. 
Small, timid, afraid of his shadow, almost; but 
after he became the superintendent of the largest 
madhouse in Paris let’s see the change from the 
almost cringing, timorous little fellow to a fearless 
man with the courage of a Hercules. 

On the day in question, this little man, after 
having won a long and arduous fight to try his 
theories on the violently insane, entered this 
largest of madhouses in gay Paree where maniacs 
clustered about him, threatened him, spat at 
him, shrieked their vengeance, kicked, lolled, and 
laughed in their insane fury. Yet they did him 
no violence for the very good reason that they 
couldn’t. They were in dungeons, or handcuffed, 
manacled and chained to the dirty, damp walls 
in their foul and loathesome prison of torture. 

This one'timx little, timid man turned to the 


FEAR CAN HOLD US BACK 


133 


locksmith he had brought with him and told him 
to strike off the chains. 

“But monsieur, they will kill you.” 

“ril take my chances,” retorted this trans¬ 
formed little man to the larger, shrinking 
locksmith. 

“But if I unshackle them, they will kill me,” 
returned the little man’s attendant. 

“You’ll have to take that chance,” was the 
firm retort of the brave little fellow, now brim¬ 
ming over with the confidence and courage of a 
giant. 

“But, monsieur,”—protests the fearful lock¬ 
smith. 

“Do as I say, or I’ll find another who will.” 

His order was obeyed. One by one the raving 
madmen, a little while ago shouting their cursing 
maledictions at the little doctor, stepped forward, 
unshackled, free, but as calm as infants; although 
some were as emotional as a Sara Bernhardt and 
as grateful as the leper who returned to Jesus 
to give thanks for his miraculous healing. 

One of the maniacs who had come from a 
dungeon where he had been confined for half a 
lifetime, after his eyes became accustomed to the 
light and he had been allowed to look outside, 
exclaimed in words worthy of an artist, “I had 
forgotten the world was so beautiful.” 

Dr. Pinel, the little man, stood amidst the 


134 


SPUNK 


thronging madmen, smiling, calm and reserved, 
yet sympathetic as an angel of mercy. 

It is said that many of these unchained madmen 
kissed his hands, many wept and none offered 
him violence. 

That was the beginning of the change in the 
treatment of the insane. The humane methods 
used today, where seldom are even the violent 
mistreated by the attendants, date back to that 
little man who was at one time timid and fearful, 
but who after the change of his inner conscious¬ 
ness, became one of the benefactors of the 
human race. 

What man can do; what you can do; what your 
sons and daughters can do, for themselves, for 
you and for mankind, when once fear has been 
conquered and courage takes its place is 
unimaginable. 

There are myriads of fears, but modern psy¬ 
chology has classified fear into seven major 
categories: fear of failure; fear of self-defense; 
fear of trusting others; fear of thinking; fear of 
speaking; fear of being alone, and fear associated 
with eugenics. Such fears become mental habits, 
and the older we become and the longer we 
entertain those fears the worse they become— 
often ending in suicide. “Humean beings,” said 
William James, of Harvard, ''are mere walking 
bundles of habits.” The only way to change 


FEAR CAN HOLD US BACK 


135 


yourself or the pattern of your behavior is by 
getting busy and changing this or that thought 
habit. Speaking of this habit^breaking, a famous 
publishing house has said: “There is nothing 
impossible about living your life as your own 
interests, desires and scale of values direct you. 
AND IT CAN BE DONE BY ANYBODY.” 

This habit'breaking system is no longer ques- 
tinned by the modern psychologist and psychi^ 
atrist. It has passed its experimental stage and 
now has become recogni 2 ;ed as safe, sound and, 
as quoted above, sure. All that is necessary is 
for the individual to be willing to help himself. 
Let’s take fear of failure as an example. Do 
we want to succeed or do we just think so? 
This fearTailure thought idea is a handicap to 
thousands of people. It can result in that terrible 
inferiority complex, which is a bogey to so m.any 
people. We see ourselves in contrast to others 
in an unfavorable light. We look at the other 
person as one who has “IT,” who appears to be 
large, intelligent and strong, and think of ourselves 
as small, stupid, and weak. Such thinking results 
in our being afraid to enter into competition with 
him. He is strong, we are weak; he is intelligent, 
we are stupid; he is great, we are small. Such com¬ 
parison, instead of arousing our best efforts, 
actually provokes a sense of insignificance. Nearly 
everyone has such feelings some time or other. 


136 


SPUNK 


And yet, such an inferiority-failure complex can 
be overcome. There is nothing strange or 
difficult about the principles which lick fear and 
make us vibrantly courageous and feel like licking 
a bunch of wildcats. Anyone, as mentioned, 
can do it. 

A salesman read one of my books, a book which 
gives the last word in the modern methods of 
overcoming fear. The book with its Appendant 
is ''Spunk.” He claimed he was not born to be 
a salesman. He was timid; he was afraid of 
people; he was even afraid of his job; every other 
person in his subconscious comparison was better 
fitted to sell goods and succeed than he. After 
reading "Spunk,” he wrote me he felt as 
though he could go through a stone wall. And 
when he would have a bad day; or feel 
mentally below par, if he re-read "Spunk” and 
applied its simple principles he would begin the 
next day with the strong vigor of a winner and 
the confident spirit that he could go through that 
stone wall. 

To have courage to go through a stone wall 
was his figure of speech. He did not use the 
metaphor of licking a bunch of wildcats, but 
he could go through a stone wall. The meta¬ 
phorical expression we apply to the results of 
reading "Spunk” does not matter so much as the 
results we receive. 


FEAR CAN HOLD US BACK 


137 


When I gave a series of lectures in the 
Worcester Theatre, Worcester, Mass., one of 
my regular attendants was Mr. Ballou, the most 
successful retail paint merchant in the city, if 
not in New England. He was so inspired from 
what my instruction had done for him, he often 
drove to Boston, bringing a carload of attendants 
to one of my series of lectures in Convention 
Hall, Boston. 

Ballou’s great success came after he had over' 
come his fear of others, and his uncomplimentary 
comparison of his abilities with those of others 
who had succeeded. So enthusiastic was he about 
“Spunk” that he was willing to go upon my 
platform and tell thousands of others what this 
system had done for him, and he was sure if 
others would apply the same easy, workable, 
principle, the book would be of incalculable 
value to them. 

There is one thing sure, we will never get 
very far if we continue to deflate our own self' 
confidence instead of raising our own stock in 
our own estimation. We cannot do that as long 
as fear is in the ascendancy. 

In speaking of this low estimation of ourselves, 
as contrasted with others I am reminded that 
it has been eloquently discussed by Emerson in 
the following words: “This overestimation of 
the possibilities of Paul and Pericles (referring to 


138 


SPUNK 


the other fellow) this underestimation of our own, 
comes from a neglect of the fact of an identical 
nature.” 

In other words, you have the identical nature 
as the other fellow. Why belittle yourself and 
fail in doing the things your inner self has seen 
in its vision at its highest moment. 

Courage, like love, casts out fear. 


Chapter XXIX 


BATTLES ARE WON OR LOST 
IN OUR MINDS 

Whatever the problem or trouble, youll find 
Lil^e battles, are won, or lost in the mind. 

David V. Bush. 


B attles of life are won or lost in our 
minds; for it is rapid decision—mental 
action—such as taking instant advantage 
of an enemy’s mistakes, that so often wins 
battles. “At Areola,” said Napoleon, “I won 
the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I seizied 
a moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, 
and gained the day with this handful. Two 
armies are two bodies which meet and endeavor 
to frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, 
and that moment must be turned to advantage.” 
“Every moment lost,” said he at another time, 
“gives an opportunity for misfortune;” and he 
declared that he beat the Austrians because 
they never knew the value of time. While they 
dawdled, he overthrew them. 


139 


140 


SPUNK 


Make your thoughts shock-proof and lost 
battles will be turned into victories for you. 
''As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” is 
scientifically and psychologically true. In the 
realm of scientific thinking we have not yet come 
to the mountaintop where we can ga2;e over into 
the promised land. But we know that "thoughts 
are things,” as Shakespeare says. 

During the World War, a Zeppelin went 
sailing over Paris, dropping bombs as it passed 
and not one was killed or seriously wounded by 
the exploding bombs. One woman, however, 
though untouched, fell dead. 

She had been killed, not by a bomb, but by a 
thought—a momentary devastating thought of 
fear conjured up in her own mind—somewhere 
in her mind the kink of fear was lurking. 

There was a train wreck in Illinois. A number 
of passengers were badly injured but many 
escaped without physical harm of any sort. Yet, 
among those who were not there were at least 
a do 2 ;en who, afterwards, developed paralysis of 
arms or legs. 

These persons, I repeat, had not received the 
least bodily harm. The whole trouble with them 
was that they had thought they must be severely 
injured, and, by thus thinking, they had so 
deranged their nervous system as to cause the 
development of paralytic symptoms. 


BATTLES ARE DECIDED IN OUR MIND 141 

The power of thought is the realest of real 
things. 'Tor every man crushed by a falling rock 
or an overturning car, do 2 :ens are crushed by 
mental objects, such as volitions and feelings and 
kinks.” Fear kinks in the mind are man’s greatest 
enemies. How easy we can pump up our blood 
pressure when we unleash the passion of emotion 
—fear. 

Man and the giraffe are the only two things 
that cannot swim naturally. Throw a day-old 
kitten into the Mississippi and it will paddle its 
way to shore. The giraffe can’t swim because 
he is built that way. Man can’t swim just 
because he is afraid. If we are afraid of life’s 
battles—we cannot hope to win. 

"As a man thinketh, so is he,” is no more 
picturesque Hterary phrase. It accords with and 
is supported by the facts of scientific research 
and everyday observation. "Control your 
thoughts, and the secret of health, happiness and 
success is in your grasp.”—^But a mind not 
controlled, but filled with kinks, is a mind that 
will defeat any ambitious man or woman. 

Shakespeare has Hamlet say: "For there’s 
nothing either right or wrong except our thinking 
makes it so.” And the great French Colonial 
General Bugeaud, says: "Mental force is the 
mistress of armies.” Mental force is what will 
make you win yQur battles of life. 


142 


SPUNK 


Philosophers have told us that the decisive 
battles of the world are fought in the mind. 
Prime your mind so that in the battles of life, 
you will always believe you will gain your point. 
’Tis even so! 

Of greatest interest, in judging the character 
of Foch today by his words of years ago, is the 
insistence which he always placed upon the 
personality of the commander—^his will, his 
belief in himself, as well as his knowledge and 
competence. '"A battle lost is a battle which 
you think you cannot gain,” he would approvingly 
quote, year after year, to his classes. If .we 
think we cannot win our battles of life, whatever 
may be the reason we must change our thinking. 

You must face life’s battles today with the 
courage of one who knows that victory is assured 
and that, should you meet a defeat or two, it is 
only a matter of delaying your ultim^ate triumph. 
Make no plans for any kind of a retreat, but think 
only of your ultimate goal and achievement. 

Allow no kinks of doubt to creep into your 
consciousness. You cannot make a modern pulb 
man car out of a broken-down stagecoach any 
more than you can be a success with a mind filled 
with kinks. Be a man who keeps on coming with 
a mind not filled with fear and negative thoughts, 
but hope, optimism, courage, and faith. 

A leopard cannot change his spots nor an 


BATTLES ARE DECIDED IN OUR MINDS 143 


Ethiopian his skin but mind can make rich men 
out of beggars, miserable people happy, great men 
out of cowards and kings out of puppets. The 
brain is, therefore, very adaptable. The brain 
and will is the thing. Believe you can win your 
battles of life, no matter how many mistakes you 
have made. If your plans are drenched in blood 
and tears, remember noble work and persever- 
ance wins. 

Perhaps the greatest pri 2 ;e fight ever staged 
insofar as attendance, gate receipts and universal 
interest are concerned was between Jack Dempsey 
and Gene Tunney. The greatest thrill for the 
greatest number of people, at any pugilistic 
combat was that famous 7th round when Tunney 
got up, half da2;ed, and danced away from his 
terrible antagonist, keeping clear from any more 
blows from Dempsey until he could collect his 
wits and gain his breath. The final decision of 
that battle you remember was given to Tunney— 
yet he had been knocked down, if not knocked 
out, in that fateful seventh round. 

Suppose you have been knocked down a few 
times in the pri 2 ie ring of life, what’s that? 
What’s a few knockdowns more or less? Aye, a 
knockout or two. Get up and dance around, 
get your breath, clinch your fists and get ready 
to finish the fight. Pitch your game of quoits 
to win! 


144 


SPUNK 


ARE you READY FOR MORE? 

David V. Bush 

Lives there a man on this mundane plane 
With never an ache and never a pain. 

Who on misfortune ne'er has been paled, 

Who’s never bit dust and never has failed? 

Go bring him out for the world to see— 

For such as on this planet be— 

And such as have a perfect score. 

You'll find are those always ready for more! 

Not whether you've won or whether you’ve lost 
But how you feel after counting the cost. 

Can you scratch your loss from experience's slate 
And start once again though somewhat late? 

Can you buck up your grit after battle’s loud din 
Can you start once again when you seem all in? 

Can you say Hke a man though heartsick to the core, 
“Other battles I’ve won—I’m ready for more.” 

The man who’s regained all he’s lost on the way 
Has had once again to pitch in the fray. 

The one who had failed has started again 
With thunder clouds lowering and pouring down rain. 
You can’t get along or go very far 
By brooding about your unlucky star. 

The farther you fall till you cannot go lower 

The more grit you should have to be ready for more. 

It’s not whether you fall, fail or cave in 

But how can you “take” those cracks on the chin; 

There’s not been one but who’s battle scarred. 


BATTLES ARE DECIDED IN OUR MINDS 145 


No one but whose record somehow has been marred, 

The ones who arrive have taken setbacks 
But always were braced for more savage attacks; 

And when they were licked, head bandaged and sore 
Could say, “I’m still able’’ to tackle once more. 

It’s not what you’ve lost, it’s not what you’ve done 
That counts for the winner in success’ long run; 

It’s not what you’ve suffered, not what you’ve gone through; 
Not whether today you are lonesome or blue. 

But whether through all of your troubles and pain 
You still have the spirit to try it again; 

For what counts most in hfe’s final score 

Is have you got the spirit to come back for more? 


It doesn’t matter how things are going today, 
if you will believe with Foche. A battle lost is 
a battle you think you cannot gain. That’s the 
reason that at the most critical time of the World 
War, he could say, ‘"My left wing is demolished, 
my right wing is broken, my center has been 
smashed, but I will advance.” 

Battles are won or lost in our minds. 


Chapter XXX 


FEAR BLOCKS OUR PROGRESS 

When nowhere is danger, or when it strides near 
The mind ma\es it worse through the terror of fear. 

David V. Bush 


W E CAN kindle a fire almost any time we 
wish; but we cannot always kindle the 
old desire of achievement if fear thoughts 
are choking the spiritual draft of ambition. Fear 
chills the blood stream and congeals the cor- 
puscles. 

Montaigne has written some pretty strong 
examples of the paraly2;ing effects of fear. For 
example: 

“In the first set battle the Romans lost against 
Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius,” he 
says, “a troop of well nigh ten thousand foot- 
men was so surprised with fear, that, seeing no 
other way to take, nor by what other course to 
give their baseness free passage, they headlong 
bent their flight toward the thickest and strongest 
squadron of their enemies, which with fury it 
routed and broke through, as it disranked, and slew 


146 


FEAR BLOCKS OUR PROGRESS 


147 


a great number of Carthaginians; resulting in a 
disgraceful flight, at the same rate it might have 
gained a most glorious victory. It is fear, I stand 
most in fear of.” 

Fear stalks abroad in many lands and holds in 
bondage its myriads. Fear is no respecter of 
persons. It enters the palace of the rich and the 
throne room of the king; it drugs the mentation 
of the executive and free2;es the reasoning of the 
learned. 

Fear results in more poor decisions of those in 
power and causes more failures and unhappiness 
than any other one agency in the world. Prac^ 
tically everyone has some secret or hidden fear. 

A newspaper reported: ‘'Charles Stegel fainted 
when given a preliminary notice of discharge from 
the postal service in Chicago. He was taken to 
his home from the Iroquois Hospital. He is 61 
years old and has been a government employee 
for ten years.” 

Men fear poverty, disease, monotony, and 
most of all what men will do to them tomorrow. 
And yet fear is absolutely unnecessary. Thou- 
sands have found the way to conquer fear. And 
thousands more will tomorrow. Only those who 
hesitate are lost. Those who will, may master 
fear, instead of fear mastering them. It is as 
simple as that. 

Dr. Hillis met a fine young American soldier in 


148 


SPUNK 


France in the first world war, who told the 
famous clergyman the following experience: ‘Tor 
months I have been the victim of fear. My 
imagination has taken hold of all of the stories of 
wounded men and made the wounds personal. I fall 
asleep at ten o’clock and wake at twelve, drenched 
with sweat. Through my imagination I have had 
my legs cut off and walked the earth a cripple; 
I have lost my eyes and gone forth blind; I have 
lost my arms and hands; . . .' I have breathed 
poison gas; I have been blackened with liquid fire; 
I have died a thousand deaths; but now, for the 
first time, I understand. Let me think my way 
through what you have said.” 

Afterward Dr. Hillis met him and found him 
transformed. He gave this testimony: “I want 
you to know that fear in me is dead. I have put 
it to the test. I front these dangers of death with 
a physical shrinking because one does not like 
pain; but as to dying and death, they are beneath 
my heel. I want you to know when you go 
home you have left here a soldier for whom there 
is no fear.” 

Yes, to get rid of fear is as simple as that. I 
have taught thousands and thousands on the 
most famous platforms in the United States and 
Canada; and now these simple methods have 
been put into a book—“Spunk”—which costs 
only one dollar. 


FEAR BLOCKS OUR PROGRESS 


149 


I have read many a book and many an article 
on fear; but never have I seen anything on the 
subject, on the negative aspect of fear, equal to 
what Elsie Robinson has written in her daily 
column, released by the King Features Syndicate. 
Here is a part of it: ''Have you heard it said that 
the root of all evil is money? ’Tisn’t so. The 
root of all evil is fear. Go to the bottom of any 
problem—yours or the other fellow’s or the 
world’s—^and you will find just the one thing, 
the same thing—fear. 

"Why are people jealous? They are afraid. 
Afraid someone will show them up . . . beat 
them to the goal. Why are people selfish? They 
are afraid, afraid they won’t get their share . . . 
their share of power ... or possession ... or 
love ... or comfort... or safety ... or whatever 
they covet at the moment. So they dare not let 
go and think of the other fellow. They must 
concentrate on self . . . serve self . . . guard self 
. . . hover endlessly over their selves like bu 2 ; 2 <irds 
circling over carrion.’’ If you can help your 
friends or associates get rid of fear, such charac^ 
teristics may be automatically overcome. 

Yes, even our health is affected by our fear. 
Every doctor knows this. Twenty "five years ago 
Dr. Frank Crane wrote these fateful words: 
"We are already glimpsing the truth, that the 
effect of fear upon one’s morals is wholly toxic; 


150 


SPUNK 


in plain English,” continues the famous doctor, 
“fear is poison in any shape or form.” 

And six hundred years before the Christian 
era, Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher, said: 
“Hate and fear breed a poison in the blood which, 
if continued, affects the organs of digestion. 
Hence it is unwise to hear or remember unkind 
things that others say of us.” 

Science knows now what to do to get fear out 
of the mind—the do2ien and one fears that are 
holding us back and preventing us from doing our 
best and therefore blocking our advancement or 
greater success. 

Fear makes people cruel, hard to get along with; 
undermines harmony in the home and achieve- 
ment in the workshop. And yet fear can be licked. 

If you have to live with people who have such 
characteristics as mentioned above, if you can 
help them get rid of fear, you may see such a 
change in their dispositions as to astound you. 
Fear that makes the face as pale as a porcelain 
doll can be overcome; fear that makes one’s heart¬ 
beat backfire in his epiglottis, can be overcome; 
fear that makes the skin on the face tight as a 
drumhead and white as a sheet can he overcome. 

It all resolves itself down to the simple ques¬ 
tion: Do we want to overcome fear, or do we 
just think we do? Would we do anything to 
overcome fear? Then the problem is easy. 


Chapter XXXI 


WHAT WE CAN DO WHEN WE LICK 
THE FOE FEAR 


THE MA?{ who is hampered by worry and 
fear 

May lose all he's gained, 'tho success is quite 
near. 


David V. Bush 



FEW years ago I was speaking to an 


overcrowded audience in Trinity Audi- 


torium, Los Angeles, while hundreds, 


outside, who could not get in, were milling around 
and blocking pedestrian traffic. 

When I paused for a moment in my speech, a 
man stood up in the balcony and asked, “May I 
say something?” I could tell by his kindly voice 
that he was a friend, so I answered, “sure, go 
ahead.” In substance this is his story. 

“When you were here two years ago, I attended 
your classes at which time I bought your book, 
'Spunk’. At that time I was a tubercular patient 
and the doctors had given me three months to 
live. Here I am tonight, pronounced a well man 


151 


152 


SPUNK 


by the physicians, and feeling as fresh as a new 
pumpkin pie right out of the oven, or a young 
football player who has just made the team. 

“My case was one of an overworked man. I 
was sales manager in Los Angeles for a large 
national concern. After receiving your instruc¬ 
tions and reading 'Spunk,’ I received such an 
impetus and belief in my own possibiHties and 
the latent powers within my sales group, that we 
all began going to town in our sales organiz^ition. 
Within six months we had increased our sales 
four hundred per cent. 

“This was such a phenomenal increase that my 
company asked me if I would go to Cleveland, 
take charge there where, for some unknown 
reason, the sales were the lowest in any city in 
the United States. I accepted the challenge and 
that was the beginning of my ill health and run 
down condition which developed into my physical 
breakdown. In Cleveland, things had been bad 
so long, that in the course of my re-organi2;ing, 
training and leading my salesmen, I overtaxed 
myself. 

“But I Upped the sales three hundred per cent. 
My doctor told me that overwork and anxiety 
were two factors which contributed to my 
condition. 

“But, after reading ‘Spunk,’—and with your in¬ 
struction—I began to feel better mentally. I saw 


WHAT WE DO TO LICK THE FOE FEAR 153 


I had been too anxious in Cleveland to equal the 
four hundred per cent increase, which I had 
made in Los Angeles, and worried about it too 
much. I should have been tickled pink that I 
had done the impossible by increasing the sales 
three hundred per cent. 

''So as I gained my spiritual poise, and found 
my inner peace, I discovered that my old time 
courage was coming back and with it, I decided I 
was too young to die, and would beat Father 
Time to the punch, which I did. I will permit 
any physician to examine me tonight. I am a new 
man, thanks to your instruction and the little 
book 'Spunk.’ ” 

Almost unbelievable isn’t it? Well, that was 
in Los Angeles—three thousand miles away, 
where perhaps the good, California booster could 
rise up in meetin’ and say, "Ah, but brother, we 
have the climate out here.” And if you ever 
expect to live at peace in California you had better 
not disagree with our good brother who knows 
his California climate. 

Well, believe it or not, I have a better testi¬ 
monial, or just as good, of what reading a Bush 
book has done for a salesman right here in Phila¬ 
delphia. Tonight he leads all the United States 
salesmen in one of our largest paint organi23-tions. 


Chapter XXXII 


THE DREAD CURSE OF FEAR 

Men can imagine, when everything'"s clear 
The future will wrec\ them, through the dread 
curse of fear. 

F ear like a thunder bolt dulls the senses 
and blinds the eyes. 

''I know not well by what springs fear doth 
work in us: but well I wot it is a strange passion: 
it robs us of our judgment like nothing else,” says 
Montaigne. “Verily I have seen many become 
mad and senseless for fear: yea, and in him, who 
is most settled and best resolved, it is certain that 
whilst his fit continueth, it begets many strange 
da2;2;lings, and terrible ama 2 iements in him.” 

Yes, that's the way fear works. The grand" 
father of Frederick the Great dropped dead of 
fear. “Fears are the centipedes and li 2 ;ards of the 
mind, hopes are the butterflies and larks.” Some 
people learn early in life how to conquer fear, 
while the vast majority never learn. And what 
misery results. 

When Montana was being settled, when 


154 


THE DREAD CURSE OF FEAR 


155 


Indians without provocation went on the war 
path as pirates of conquest, or for vengeance, with 
blood-gored hands of hate, the pioneers traveled 
in wagon trains, thus better able to meet the 
hostile foe than if traveling alone. Sometimes a 
timid wagoneer turned back—usually to be 
massacred by the lurking red men, seeking whom, 
singly, they could dispatch. 

One day a man named Adams, a merchant who 
had three wagons loaded with merchandise (one 
wagon load of valuable silk) for some unknown 
reason detached himself from the wagon train, 
and with his wife lingered a day or two behind at 
Stillwater River. 

A day or two later he and his men hot-footed 
it to the Yellowstone, where the train was resting, 
to tell the sad and tragic story that his wagons 
had been robbed, his wife had been scalped and 
he chased away by the infuriated Indians. 

Close questioning revealed the fact that he had 
not actually seen his wife killed but he supposed 
she had been for he saw some Indians chase her 
as she fled. 

A number of men from the wagon train accom¬ 
panied Adams back to search for his wife. They 
followed tracks by a creek, from time to time 
calling her name. After a while she answered 
feebly. They rushed to the place from whence 
came the faint voice to find her, unscathed, un- 


156 


SPUNK 


molested, but plenty hungry from wandering, 
and lost. 

Fear presents itself in many disguises and 
formas. It has many names and faces. Resent^ 
ment, jealously and inferiority may disguise it; 
subservience may conceal it. Sometimes it shows 
its ugly head in hate, revenge and destructive 
thoughts and actions. It may be called anxiety, 
apprehension or restlessness. 

Or it may be expressed in boredom, silence, or 
melancholy. That’s fear. All of us have some 
fears sometimes, until we have learned how silly 
imagined fears are and how easy it is to lick the 
deadly dragon. 

Fear can swing us from the tragic to the 
ridiculous. The eminent Scotch divine. Dr. 
Lawson, had many quirks of the mind, forgetful¬ 
ness being one. Once, having put one foot in the 
gutter he hobbled along the whole length of the 
street, and, as soon as he reached home, hastily 
sent for the doctor to cure him of his imaginary 
lameness. 

This is what happened when Adams thought his 
wife had been killed. When the small party of 
whites approached the bevy of Crow Indians, on 
that fateful day, one of the Indians appeared with 
a knife in his hand; fear gripped the white men 
who misinterpreted the gesture as an assault to 
kill, whereupon one of the white men shot the 


THE DREAD CURSE OF FEAR 


157 


well meaning Indian dead in his tracks. Then 
Adams and the other two men fled while the 
Crows pursued them, trying to inform them of 
their good intentions. 

The Indians saw the fear-gripped men and 
understood. They would be friends but fear in 
the minds of the whites made them mortal enemies. 

That’s just the way that terrible evihspreading 
fear'goblin works. ‘'Whilst the fit continueth, it 
begets many strange da2;2;lings and terrible ama2;e'' 
ments.” 

If we are filled with fear we see phantoms and 
enemies instead of opportunities and friends. 

“Timidity and clear thinking do not go hand 
in hand.” 

“What begins in fear, usually ends in folly.” 

In our depression of the thirties an editor wrote, 
“Since 1914 the world has lived in a state of fear, 
of creeping, bending, nervous apprehension. 
Everybody dreads something. Europe looks for" 
ward, with terror, to another war.” And the 
thing we feared came upon us. 

“Fear is the curse of individuals and nations, 
‘the parent of cruelty,’ ’tis fear that ‘makes men 
believe the worst’.” 

And yet fear need not be tolerated. Fear can 
be conquered by modern psychological methods, 
if people only knew how to put it under sub" 


158 


SPUNK 


mission and would pay the price to nail it on 
the head. 

Some people only think they want success. 
They are not willing to pay the price of success— 
preparation, experience and industry. So it 
is with fear. Many people only think they want 
to have mastery over fear. They would do 
nothing to get rid of fear. Perhaps one reason is, 
they are so inoculated with it, they think there is 
no hope for them to conquer fear, worst of all 
mental maladies. But such a one can prove for 
himself that he may be wrong. Thousands have 
learned how easy it is to master fear and “What 
others have done, I can do,” said one of our great 
leaders. 

Russell H. Con well was not only one of 
America’s greatest preachers, but he was as keen 
an observer of human nature and affairs as any 
foreign correspondent who ever wired his paper 
a story. 

It was in 1915 when he reported in the Temple 
Review, that “In Fernandina, Florida, when they 
had the yellow fever in Jacksonville, more people 
died of fright for fear of getting the yellow fever, 
than actually died of the fever in Jacksonville. 

“The fear that it was coming, and the rumors 
that were circulated about it, and the stretching 
of the news and stories made it a wretched mental 
pestilence in Fernandina, and yet they did not 


THE DREAD CURSE OF FEAR 


159 


have a case of yellow fever there. They said that 
more than a hundred people died of the fright 
concerning it.” 

Fear is man's worst enemy, and yet modern 
psychology has discovered how to subdue this 
worst of our enemies. If you would like to get 
rid of fear, it is simple, it is easy, there is no long 
waiting for results. The soldier with nothing to 
do, under bombardment, in the trenches, op any 
dangerous duty, without any activity, soon 
cracks, or his morale is more susceptible to break¬ 
ing, because the mind is of necessity focused on 
the danger. Under the strain of inactivity— 
whether under fire, or in camp with nothing to do 
but wait—an army would rather go into battle 
than have such a mental stress, hence any kind 
of activity or diversion is a good treatment to 
keep up morale. The best diversions are those 
which involve the most activity. 

Hence whether in war or at home, another 
method to lick fear is to find something to do, to 
divert the mind from the thing we dread or fear. 

Give the methods herein outlined a trial, and 
see if you do not lick fear. 


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